Behind Enemy Lines
by Snowfallxo
Summary: Nick Lucas is different. In other words, he's not supposed to exist. Now he's walking behind enemy lines -- but who is the enemy? a Nalex/Nelena story.
1. runaway & stowaway

**Nick Lucas  
**He's a big popstar in the world's most famous band, JONAS. (But you knew that) What you don't know about the Lucas's could surprise you, however. They're wizard-hunters, members of the immortal society who seek the power that the wizards took from them millenia ago. Their powers are limited: they can teleport short distances, read the minds of regular mortals, and render themselves invisible for short periods of time. And after Joe and Kevin pass their test and become trainees in this secret society, Nick's left in the dark.

**Alex Russo  
**She's a normal American teen, except for one big secret -- she's a wizard. For a century, now, the wizard-hunters, or "Dark Angels", have been dormant, but 101 years after their last attack, they begin to surface again, wreaking havoc across the wizarding society of America. The Russos believe they're safe -- they've been told that there's no Angels in New York. It's only after they recieve a warning from someone walking the enemy lines that they begin to rethink their saftey. New York is not far from New Jersey.

After a paticularily bad day, with Joe and Kevin flaunting their abilities in his face, Nick sets off for New York with only his guitar and his wallet. There is where he meets Alex, who immediately confronts him about his family. Her odd (yet still secret) ability to tell wizard from mortal from monster uncovers a startling truth for Nick -- he's a wizard living among his mortal enemies. Now he's left to choose sides -- the ones he was raised with or the ones he belongs with.

He's stuck behind enemy lines -- but who is the enemy?

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A/N: I promised my sister a WOWP story, but I can't write fanfiction for anything but something Jonas-related, so... of course I'll add in a JONAS twist.**

**Disclaimer: Don't own WOWP, don't own JONAS.**

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**behind enemy lines -- a jonas/wowp crossover fic  
chapter one – runaway & stowaway**

Nick Lucas sat, hidden, in the corner of his family's firehouse home, a guitar in his lap. A notebook was strewn aside, and balls of paper covered the floor around him. But not even music could describe what he was feeling.

He wasn't like his brothers at all. He was mortal. Helpless. Alone.

All three boys had known for forever that they were "wizard hunters", or the "Dark Angels". Seekers of the powers that wizards possessed. To take back what was supposively rightfully theirs. And Nick simply didn't have the ability to tell wizard from mortal. A mortal not unlike himself.

"Nick, honey," his mom, Sandy, said, coming over to his corner.

He sighed. "Go away."

"It's dinner time," she said softly. "I made my famous potato salad."

"I'm not hungry." It wasn't like he was disappointed that he didn't possess any supernatural ability; the hunting and destroying of innocent wizards never had really appealed to him (the stories gave him nightmares when he was little, and still did today), but Joe and Kevin had been rubbing it in his face all day. The fact that they could do simple magic, like teleport their selves up and downstairs (but no further) or (occasionally) read his mind. But Nick wasn't special. He was just Nick Lucas, just your average teenage rockstar. Even little Frankie was destined to that fate someday.

"Come on, sweetie, how about some fried chicken?"

Nick looked up into his mother's eyes, then turned his own brown ones away. "Fine," he muttered, standing up but still carrying the guitar. He clutched it to his stomach as he made his way past the fire poles and down the stairs.

He expected Joe or Kevin to make some comment about how "plobnrg" it was to be able to do stupid little magic tricks, but they were silent, sensing the solemn mood their little brother had brought to the table.

The silence continued all throughout dinner, with only the clanking of silverware to be heard and the faint sound of "Keep It Real" playing in the background. "Thanks for dinner, Mom," Kevin said, breaking the silence and grabbing his plate. Joe followed him with barely another word. Nick stayed, staring at the pile of potato and mayonnaise on his plate. He looked up just in time to see Frankie disappear.

On an impulse, Nick stood up from the table and grabbed the guitar at his feet. "Where are you going?" his dad Tom asked, but the youngest member of JONAS didn't reply. Without saying a word, he slammed the front door behind him as Joe, Kevin, and Frankie watched from the stairs.

At sixteen, he had a learner's permit, but Nick technically wasn't allowed to drive without an adult and during the night, two laws he was breaking. It didn't matter. Apparently he failed at life anyway.

With the guitar bungee-corded to the back, he drove off on the motorcycle. First he'd wrenched the sidecar off. He wasn't quite sure how he did it without a wrench, but the strength had come and he'd just pulled it off. It didn't matter, anyway, they were millionaires. They could buy a new one.

With Wyckoff and the rest of New Jersey behind him, Nick crossed the bridge to Manhattan without even thinking. Full of people who could kill a sixteen-year-old boy in his sleep. Or while he was awake. As the cycle ran out of gas, he coasted to a stop beside a pedestrian street, with a sign labeled "Waverly Place" posted to the wall. It looked promising enough. Chaining the bike to a bike rack and taking the guitar with him, he walked down the deserted street. The only lights were coming from a sandwich shop. "Waverly Sub Station, open 10 to 10," a sign proclaimed. Nick looked at his watch.

It was nine-thirty. The exact time they were having a phone conference with the president of their record company.

Nick bit his lip, and reached for the door handle.

_~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~_

**(n**ick**pov)**

Cautiously, I opened the door and was greeted by a pretty girl who looked to be about sixteen. "Welcome to Waverly Sub Station," she said in a dull monotone voice. "I'm Alex, I'll be your server-"

"That's okay," I replied softly. "I, uh, I just need a quiet place to rest for a while."

"Oh." She rolled her eyes and sat down at a table. "Well, we're closing in a half hour, but… have a seat." She looked at me with strange, piercing brown eyes. "So, any reason why you're here at nine-thirty at night?"

I started to unpack the guitar. "Nope," I lied.

"Well, you look really sad and depressed, so I was guessing that there had to be something that's bothering you."

"Um, thanks?" I sat down on the chair across from her and placed the guitar on my lap, resting my arm on the neck.

"That was your cue to tell me what's going on. I need some new gossip, even if it is from a person I don't know. So, did a girl break up with you?"

"No." I looked to my feet. "I really can't tell you. Family stuff."

"Yeah, but, I think I have some idea." She took a straw out of the holder and started to chew on it. "You're a wizard, right? I'm never wrong, so don't lie to me. I'm one too, so…" She trailed off, obviously not having much more to say.

I stared at her like she was insane. "Umm, no." How could I be a wizard if my whole family were members of the Dark Angels? That was completely, physically, impossible. If I was really, truly a wizard, I would already be dead, killed by my own parents and my own siblings.

"Don't lie," she hissed. I flinched back from her narrowed eyes.

"I'm not a wizard," I repeated. "That's impossible, I mean, my parents and my brothers are pure-blood… wizard hunters. Dark Angels. I don't know what you call them…"

"You're… one of them?" she whispered, getting up and starting to back away slowly.

I shook my head. "No. I failed my test. Don't have it in my blood, apparently."

"'Cause you're a wizard. Were you adopted?"

I gave the girl a look. "Why do you care, anyway? I don't even know you. Barely know your name."

"Fine," she snorted. "I'm Alex Russo. Now you know me." She paused briefly. "And you are…?"

"Nick Lucas. And no, I'm not adopted."

"Oh, you're in that band…" Her face lit up quickly with recognition, then it faded back into its seriousness. "Come with me. I'm going to prove that you're a wizard."

I didn't want to prove anything. "You don't give up easily, do you?"

"You'll learn that soon enough." She winked at me as she pulled me off my feet and towed me across the empty sub shop to a metal door. The guitar clattered to the ground behind us.

"The storage freezer? Really?"

"Just wait," she replied, and opened the door.

There was no storage freezer behind the storage freezer door. Instead there was a dark room, a really dark room, yet she could somehow see in there. "Come on," Alex said, and pulled me inside, leaving me in standing in the middle while she looked from something. By the looks of the mess in here, it could take her forever.

But after a minute, she pulled two sticks out of a box. They glowed a light purple in her hand, illuminating her face. "These are magic wands. I'm sure you've heard about them in fairy tales."

"Bippity boppity boo," I muttered.

"Well, they're charmed. A defense method against the Dark Angels. You see, when a wizard holds them without performing a spell, they'll glow slightly. See?" She paused, as if she expected me to answer her rhetorical question. "However, when one of the hunters holds one, it'll cause them pain in some shape or form. If you're human, nothing will happen." She held one out to me. I hesitated. "Oh, come on. If it hurts you, you deserved it."

My hands shaking, I reached for the glowing rod. As my hands touched the metal, I felt a slight tingling feeling. It felt good. Tentatively, Alex let go of the wand, and as her touch left its surface, the wand's glow changed from purple to blue. My stomach flip-flopped inside me with a feeling of being both excited and nervous. I was a wizard. Not an angel. Really, truly a wizard. Really, truly different.

"You can keep that," Alex said. "It was my first wand."

"I can't take it," I said, trying to push it back into her hands.

"I still have one," she said, waving the other stick around, the one that still glowed purple in her hands. "Now that one's yours."

I looked at it again. "Why do you want to help me, anyway?"

"Well..." She looked down towards her feet, which I could sort of see by wand light. "I didn't really help, I mean… now you've got a wand, so you can perform magic, sure, but… your family. I mean, they'll…"

"Kill me." I saw the problem now. "Oh."

"So you'll stay here."

"Here? Why do you like me so much, Alex? And won't you get in trouble?"

She rolled her eyes. "My parents, knowing them they'll never find out. My older brother Justin might, but I can always threaten him if necessary. As for my little brother Max, you could make up the lamest excuse and he'd buy it, so I don't worry about him." She walked over to the wall and turned on the light. The wands seemed to stop glowing, but it was probably just because of the new light. "I'll bring you food and such, although I hope you like cold cuts. And I'll teach you magic. Or you could read the spell book and work that way. Although, despite what Justin might tell you, I'm not that bad of a wizard."

Despite being incredibly unsure about this whole thing, including what I would do for school and such (at least it was Friday, I had two days of the weekend to work that out), I actually smiled. "Okay, fine, I'll stay."

"Good. I actually like you, Nick, which is saying something. I don't like a lot of people. And I don't want to see you die." She waved the wand, and the cushions of the couch began to rearrange themselves into a bed. "You can sleep there. If you're hungry… um, wait until tomorrow. And we'll start wizard lessons tomorrow."

She moved towards the light switch, and as the lights went off, disappeared from the room with not even a poof of smoke.

The wand glowed bright in my hands, and I was left wondering what tomorrow would bring.


	2. a beginner's mistake

**A/N: I hate this chapter. So boring. But I have to set everything up... which is a pain. So the next couple of chapters, including the third at least, are going to be redundantly boring. Sorry. :(**

**Disclaimer: I don't own WOWP or JONAS. I'm not that cool. Duh.**

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**chapter two: a beginner's mistake**

From a normal, mortal point of view, it looked as though the idiots holding the glowing sticks would most definitely lose to their military-like opponents, the smaller group of people holding large machine-gun-like things. But I knew, and everyone immortal on that battlefield knew that with only a couple words, the other side could be demolished. So maybe they did have a pretty equal chance.

My own eyes flickered from the wizards to the hunters and back, searching the front lines for familiar faces. It wasn't long before I found them.

Alex, standing proudly on one side.

Joe and Kevin, standing just as proudly on the other.

Suddenly, it was like everyone else had disappeared. It was just me and those three people standing on the empty field. Kevin's finger was on a button, fingering it gently, waiting for the right time. Alex's mouth was ready to say something. A spell.

I felt like I lost control of my body as I started running. It was almost in slow motion, the way my adrenaline made the world slow down. "NO!" I shouted, and without even thinking, threw myself into the space between the three people.

Funny thing was, I didn't know who I was sacrificing myself to protect – was it my brothers… or could it be Alex?

I'd never know.

I awoke in a sweat, although I was pretty sure I was aware the whole time that it was a dream. There was a clock glowing in the corner, and I could make out the time clearly from my makeshift bed – 7:05 in the morning. There were no windows in this room, there was no other way to tell the time.

How coincidental. "I was fine 'till seven-o-five," I muttered to myself, rolling over on the couch-bed.

It was another half-hour before Alex came in. "'Morning, superstar," she mumbled, throwing a box of Crunchy Cats at my head. All sorts of memories came to my mind when I saw the familiar cartoons decorating the box… _How about some Crunchy Cats cereal with a brand new good morning taste of some new song!_

Even if Kevin could end up being my murderer someday, his stupid remarks were still things to laugh at.

"You're smiling oddly," Alex remarked as she sat down on a chair, mainly to stare at me.

"Eh, just some memories. Idiotic brothers, and the idiotic things they do."

She laughed softly. "Believe me, I know exactly what you're talking about." She continued to stare at me while I forced the dry bits down my throat. I didn't quite want to admit this, but I was staring too.

"Why are you staring at me?" I asked.

She seemed to snap out of some sort of trance. "Oh, sorry. Um…" She paused. "Your eyes are pretty, you know that?"

Well, that was an odd comment. "Uh, thanks?"

There was a moment of silence. "Ignore what I just said, please."

"I think I'd like that."

She smiled. "Anyway, welcome to wizard lessons. I'm not sure what we should start with, so… I did a little research – and you should know that if Justin were here, he'd be passed out on the floor with surprise, it's that rare – and since apparently the DA can become invisible, it might be a nice trick to have."

"Mind-reading, teleportation, and invisibility," I reeled off my tongue. Alex gave me a look. "Sorry, you have to remember I was raised as one of them, expecting that I would eventually become one."

"You make me think you're going to somehow become one of them," she said softly. Now it was my turn to be startled. Did she always have these mood swings? "You know, Nick, I want to tell you something I've never told anyone before."

"What?"

She exhaled heavily. "With one look at a person, I can tell whether they're a mortal, a wizard, or a monster. And you… you just hang right on the line of monster and wizard. Like you're both. And I don't want to be near you or be responsible for when you snap. If you snap," she added, a little late.

"Thanks for believing in me," I said dryly. I wasn't too thrilled about her mistrust in me, although I could vaguely understand it.

"Let's get started, then," she said, picking up her wand and going over to a big book. She glanced over the open page quickly, not really seeming to read it, then gripped the wand tighter. "The whole basic concept with most spells is that they have to rhyme, so you can pretty much just make them up on the spot. It's called spell improvisation." She grinned a sheepish smile, seemingly in a better mood than she was a minute ago. "Hopefully you're good at rhyming."

"I'm a songwriter, remember? I kinda have to be."

"Right." Alex stepped away from the book and closer to me until she was grasping my hand. "For purposes of the spell," she said as she followed my gaze. I didn't reply; I rather liked her touch. Then she took a breath. "Help Nick test his magic ability, make both of us have invisibility."

I was still staring at our hands, intertwined, and I shrieked when they both disappeared, causing Alex to let go. "It worked," I breathed, still in shock.

"Of course it did," she replied cockily. "Did you think it wouldn't?"

"Well, no, but…" I looked down at where my body would be if I could see it. "I've seen Joe and Kevin do it before, and it's always really weird."

"Do you want to try changing us back?"

"I don't know if I can."

"Oh, come on."

I closed my eyes and felt around for Alex's hand. Strangely, it made me feel better. "Apparently I have magical capability, please remove this curtain of invisibility." I felt a little cheap using the same word, but I wasn't sure what to do.

And it worked. I wanted to scream with happiness, but I kept a poker face. "What next?" I asked, slowly letting go of her hand.

She shrugged. "I don't plan."

"That's comforting," I replied sarcastically. There was something about this girl that made me act differently. Somehow, I didn't really feel like the Nick Lucas I'd left in New Jersey. I felt lighter, less serious, less… me. I felt more like someone else.

I was lost in my thoughts as Alex was looking for something, and didn't notice someone enter the room. "Who's he?" a sharp voice demanded.

Alex spun around. "Ugh, Harper," she said, rolling her eyes. "This is Nick. We're in the middle of something. Can you come back later, or maybe take over my shift? I consider this really important."

"Normally, when you say that, it's not really that important." Harper looked to be about Alex's age, aside from the clothes she was wearing. With all the crayons glued onto it, it looked like she came from a Crayola box.

"Do you want me to die?"

"Well, no…"

"Do you want Justin to die?"

This changed Harper's expression right away. "No, ma'am," she said.

"Then do what I say."

But the red-haired girl still shook her head. "I'm sick of you bossing me around, Alex," she said.

Alex turned to her friend, her eyes round. "Harper, I'm serious this time. The people who come looking for him-" her eyes flickered to me quickly, then back to Harper "-could kill you, could kill me without even batting an eyelash. They're monsters. Nick, he used to live with them. He has no other place to go."

"I think he's some sort of runaway that you have some sort of crush on, so you're hiding him in this room of really weird stuff." The way she emphasized the last words told me that she was trying to hide the fact that she knew this was a wizardry room, a lair. She wasn't a very good liar.

"Harper, Nick's a wizard. He knows everything." Alex blushed fiercely, probably because Harper had said she had a crush on me.

"Not everything," I muttered, sitting down on the couch, which had reformed itself back into a couch again. "Hardly everything." I felt like I knew nothing, actually.

"So these are magical monsters?" Harper's voice was a whisper now. "What do they look like?"

"Humans," Alex said matter-of-factly. "They live among us. And it's their goal in life to destroy us, to acquire our powers. They'll kill anyone who gets in their way… namely you." She paused for a second before adding, "They're, like, level ten monsters. If the Monster Hunter Council was too scared to handle Juliet and her family, level sixes, then they'd go hide in a bunker somewhere if we reported level tens. As for Justin… well, he'd go hide under a bed and hug his action figures." She actually paled at this. Were my brothers that dangerous?

"Oh." Harper looked like she was going to throw up. "How did you live with them?" she asked me.

I didn't quite know how to answer that question, lacking the knowledge myself. "My family, my parents, my brothers. – they don't know that I'm a wizard. I only found out yesterday. Not all children of the Angels possess the powers. They kinda just assumed I was one of them and cast me aside." I took a breath. "Normally, these kids are neglected, especially if they've got siblings with the 'Gift'. Exactly like me."

"So he's staying here," Alex said.

"And your parents are okay with this?" Harper said incredulously.

"Do you really think I'd ask them?" Apparently this behavior was typical of Alex.

Harper didn't respond, but she was smiling slightly at this point. "Well, I'll leave you two to your magic…" She trailed off. "See ya!" As she skipped out, a couple crayons fell off her dress and rolled under a chair. Alex smirked.

The next four hours were spent working on three different spells. Levitation was easy, and the truth spell and telekinesis were all mastered within the first hour. Alex had bigger ambitions, however. Teleportation and shape-shifting. With three hours until the lunch rush, I hesitantly agreed.

It was when we ended up in Tokyo that we both began to rethink things.

"Alex, I'm not ready for this." Plus, last time we were in Tokyo, our parents had been called away on a mission for the DA. We'd been by ourselves (not counting Big Man) for five days.

"I did the same thing when I first learned too," Alex said, trying very hard to be supportive. "Except we ended up in Antarctica and Justin was laughing at me the whole time."

"Oh." That made me feel a little bit better. I grabbed her hand again for support. I couldn't get the thoughts out of my head... I just loved her touch. Squeezing my eyes shut, I visualized the place I wanted to end up – what I guess I now called home, the sub station. The lair. For now.

The next thing I remembered was her poking me in the side. "Nick," she whispered softly. I opened my eyes slowly.

"When did someone install fire poles in the lair?" I asked very, very quietly, looking around the firehouse. I guess when I'd thought of "home", my magic had taken me here. Not such a great idea. I could hear Joe and Kevin downstairs, and had no clue if Dad or Mom were here. Wait, no, they'd be at Frankie's soccer game.

"Haha," Alex said dryly, looking around nervously. She very obviously didn't feel comfortable here, and the more I thought about it, the more I began to feel out of place. The simple presence of their kind made my skin itch, but I didn't want to leave.

The sound of shoes galloping up the stairs. Alex squeezed my hand tighter, which didn't help at all, it just distracted me. "We can't let my brothers see, again give us invisibility," I said. We faded into the background just in time to see Joe and Kevin come up the stairs.

"I miss Nick," Kevin was pouting.

"The boy has mood swings," Joe pointed out. "Violent ones. He'll come back, Kevin."

"Do you promise?" Kevin whispered. I hadn't realized how much this would hurt my brothers, but Kevin had tears in his eyes and Joe didn't want to answer the question.

"I can't promise anything," Joe replied.

Slowly, I untangled my fingers from Alex's and stepped away from her side. "Nick?" she asked quietly, but I couldn't see where she was at all, and I couldn't tell if she was feeling around for me. Best to act quickly.

With one last try at the teleportation thing, I visualized myself standing in front of the door. This time, it worked; I was standing on the firehouse doorstep. "A mortal they may think I may be, make it so they can see me." Reciting a different spell each time was getting to be more and more of a pain. Now visible, I knocked on the door. They were my brothers. Why was I so nervous?

The simple nature of their kind would have them helpless to the hunt. They might not even recognize me as their brother as they went in for the kill. Pity was not in the job description, Kevin had said after their first night of training. Their victims would suffer in silence. It was such a stupid, amateur mistake that I'd made, thinking I was capable of taking on the enemy, even if I did know them like I knew myself. And I'd just abandoned Alex upstairs, my only hope of survival if they were to see what I'd become. Their enemy. Their nightmare. Was it a disguise that hid what I truly was -- their brother?

So why was I so nervous? Oh, yeah. 'Cause they could kill me.

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**A/N: My lame attempt at a cliffhanger... so what happens next? R&R and I'll post more!**

**~ Lizzy**


	3. i promise you

**A/N: This chapter is dedicated to chibiyugixyami (whose name I had to copy-paste so I wouldn't spell it wrong, lol), who was raised right (haha) and is... I think one of two readers. I feel like you needed a shout-out 'cause... you were one of two reviewers in a week. Not that I normally do better... (I don't.) Plus, your story is awesome too. :)**

**My other shoutout goes to love2talk96 'cause you were my other reviewer. Both of you are awesome. Rock on. :)**

**This part is rated T for a little language. Not much. (****This is just getting really boring, you can skip everything after this sentence in the author's note.)**

**Disclaimer: JONAS was renewed for a second season, but they're changing the setting to California! Obviously I don't own it, because it's perfect the way it is, and I would never change it! (And WOWP too. I just happen to like JONAS better. No offense. He.)**

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**chapter three: i promise you (a**lex**pov)**

His hand in mine... I didn't want to admit it, but it felt great. Absolutely amazing. The warmth was there one minute, then gone in a second. "Nick?" I whispered, not wanting him to leave. Blindly, I groped around for him, but I couldn't see my own hands, let alone him. "Nick, come back."

There was a knock on the door, and my heart beat faster when I realized what he'd done. That idiot of a boy. He was lucky his brothers hadn't picked up on the magic activity when he'd teleported away, but now he was down there knocking on the front door? What, did he want to die?

_Please be some Girl Scouts, please be some Girl Scouts,_ I thought frantically as Joe and Kevin went downstairs to get the door. I followed them, using the stairs instead of sliding down a pole. Although it looked like fun.

Joe opened the door without even looking who it was in the first place. I wanted to attack the boy, but I kept my feet glued to my spot at the bottom of the stairs, with a clear view of the doorway. And I could see quite clearly that it was Nick standing there. Nick, with his perfect curly hair and beautiful brown eyes...

Nick, who could be about to die.

"Nick!" squealed Kevin, and hugged his brother close. Obviously Nick had been expecting the worst too, because he looked startled at the warm reception he was receiving. Joe was a bit slower to the welcome, but joined the group hug anyway. It looked like something you'd see in a Disney movie, the three boys hugging each other. Or maybe in this case, two boys trapping the third in a deadly embrace. Maybe they were squeezing all the air out of him and killing him that way.

"You're. Touching. Me." Nick managed to wiggle free of his brothers' tangled mess of arms, not looking pleased at all. His smile that I'd seen during our lessons was gone, and on his face was his more trademark poker face. Nick Lucas, the serious one. Not the Nick Lucas I'd gotten to know in the past thirteen or so hours.

"You're back!" Kevin said gleefully.

Nick shook his head. "No, I'm not. I came back to say goodbye."

"Goodbye?" Joe and Kevin said together. "What, Nick, no... you can't leave again!" Joe added frantically, hugging his little brother once again.

"I have to," Nick said softly. "And I can't tell you why." His eyes flickered to where I was standing, and somehow I realized he knew I was listening. "You'll understand soon enough."

"No," Kevin said. "We'll understand now."

"You got a goodbye, Kevin, isn't that enough?" Nick snapped, his patience running out. "I'm not supposed to talk to you, to be with you. I'm not even sure if I'm supposed to exist. I could die." He turned away from his brothers' questioning eyes at this point. He'd left out the small fact that they could be the ones who kill him. "I'm not like you," Nick whispered.

Joe hugged his brother tighter. "Nick, we know you're not part of the DA, but that doesn't mean you have to leave just because you can't do magic-"

"Who says I can't?" Nick breathed.

Joe and Kevin stepped back from their younger brother very, very slowly. Nick's chocolate-colored gaze stared right at them as they backed away. I couldn't see Joe's face, it was covered by his hair, but Kevin's hazel eyes stared right back at his brother, mistrust shining in them. "What?" he asked.

Nick suddenly looked away, realizing that he'd said too much. "Nothing," he said quickly. "Just kidding." His face ashen, he moved past his brothers and headed for the stairs. I followed him as Joe and Kevin just stared.

"I know you're there," he muttered once we were out of earshot. "And I know what you're thinking."

"You're really just going to leave?" I blurted. He nodded. "Why? They don't know what you are."

"They're only trainees, Alex," he said, sighing. "My parents, they're some of the most powerful of their kind. That's why I was expected to become one of them. They'll recognize it immediately and track me down if I try and run away." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "A dark Angel needs to acquire the spirits of ten different wizards, whether they have full powers or not, in order to get their powers back. You see, the victims of these attacks don't die. They become soulless monsters." He kept his head lowered, looking at his shoes. "If I stay, and if Joe and Kevin don't kill me, they'll kill me. Because my parents are only one soul away from achieving that goal. Immortality. Eternal power."

I didn't even need to say a spell, suddenly I felt very visible again. Nick immediately looked away from me, hiding his face. He didn't want me to see him cry. "Nick, it's okay," I whispered, pulling him towards me and hugging him. "I won't let anyone hurt you."

He didn't respond; he shook even more in my arms, his tears getting my shirt wet. I didn't care at all. "Do you promise?" he asked finally, repeating the same words that Kevin had said only a little bit earlier.

"I promise," I whispered back.

He pulled away from me, wiping the last tear from his cheek. Without another word, he turned away and half-ran, half-trudged to what was obviously his area of the room. He grabbed a pair of drumsticks and two guitar cases. By the look of one of them, it was empty, probably for the guitar he'd left back in the lair. The other one was for an electric guitar, and it looked heavier. Tossing the sticks at me, along with his wand, he rummaged through all sorts of papers and found a notebook. I caught the sticks single-handedly and came over to him as he began stuffing stuff into a plaid messenger bag, the notebook included. The last thing Nick put into the bag was a picture – him with his brothers and two girls, a blonde and a brunette. _Hopefully Joe and Kevin's girlfriends, _I thought to myself, and was so glad that he couldn't hear what I was thinking. I wanted to be his girlfriend, and I wanted it so bad, but there was no way I could tell if he liked me back. I mean, I'd always had a crush on Nick Lucas, but it'd been a celebrity crush. I tried so hard not to go fangirl on him now that I actually knew him.

"Let's go," he said, reaching for my arm and slinging the bag over his shoulder. He passed me a guitar case, the one with the electric guitar in it. We had amps somewhere at home, I was pretty sure, and a drum set. I wouldn't deprive him of his music. "I would have you teleport us," he said, "but we should go through the door first so Joe and Kevin don't get suspicious."

"You should," I pointed out. "I'll meet you outside." And with that, I disappeared and reappeared on the Lucas's front step.

But Nick never came out the door.

**(n****pov)**

Joe and Kevin were not downstairs.

"Hello?" I called tentatively, looking around. Nothing. "I'm leaving," I called again. Still nothing. I dropped my bag and started looking around. Behind couch cushions, in our parent's room, in Frankie's room, behind the island in the kitchen... nothing.

Until they came sliding down the poles.

"How the hell did you get up there?" I snapped, suddenly mad.

"For someone who has magic themselves, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out," Joe said, crossing his arms.

Oh, shit. They'd been listening. Worse yet, they'd been watching. They must have seen Alex. They'd seen me cry, they'd seen me hug her. They'd seen me pack, and they'd seen her disappear. "I, um..." I paused. Should I play dumb? Not even Kevin would buy that. "I think I'll be leaving now before you kill me."

"Technically, we should, but we don't know how," Kevin said, smiling. It was sickly and sweet. Not his normal smile. It was fake. They saw everything now, they saw what I was. Fortunately, they couldn't kill me. They could trap me here until our parents got home, but they couldn't kill me.

Yet again, I couldn't escape. Alex had my drumsticks and my wand. Would she hear me if I scream? I could try hand magic, but that was apparently advanced, and I was far from advanced. "Well, bye," I said, trying the last thing I had left. "I'm leaving."

They didn't seem to try and stop me, but as soon as I picked up my bag, they'd materialized in front of the doorway. "You're not leaving," Joe said.

"Watch me."

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**A/N: dun dun dun...**


	4. angels & fireflies

**A/N: This chapter is my favorite so far. I finished _The Van Alen Legacy _today, and to anyone who hasn't read the Blue Bloods series, by Melissa de la Cruz, I highly, highly suggest it. (I make a reference.) It's also the first time Stella is mentioned by name, haha. I'll get both her and Macy in later chapters.**

**Review, please! Please, please, please! Thanks go to silvereyed angel and chibiyugixyami for reviewing! You're awesome!**

**Disclaimer: Don't own JONAS, WOWP, the Blue Bloods books, or the song "Fireflies", by Owl City. (Just thought it would fit.)**

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**chapter four: angels and fireflies**

Joe disappeared and reappeared ten seconds later, holding a stick that looked similar to a wand. I took a couple steps back. The stick was glowing a bright, sickly red. It made me feel queasy just looking at it. My brothers read my expression and laughed slightly, taking pleasure in my discomfort. I couldn't scream now, my words were all stuck in my throat.

Now I had one chance to make this work. As Joe clutched the stick in his hand and Kevin stared me down, I held out my hands and bit down on my lip, draining all the power I had into my hands. They came closer, step by step, but I couldn't move, or else I'd break my concentration.

Three yards, two yards, one yard...

I had absolutely no control over what I was doing, but I had to do something to stop them. It was draining my strength every moment I spent gathering the light in my hands, but the shell-shocked look on my brothers' faces told me that I was delaying them, buying me a little bit more time. But they still came closer, and the stick began to brush my skin. It burned, it hurt, but it numbed, it was cold... if I could make the power work for me, make it somehow change me... would it go away...?

Could it work like the teleportation? Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried that – I visualized the form I wanted to be in. Something I could use to escape. Something powerful, something big, something scary... with just the right form in mind, I let the light fall over me.

The burning disappeared. The numbness stayed, but was forced to the back of my mind. With very little control over my changing form, I lashed out at my brothers, my new claws unsheathed. Joe and Kevin stumbled back in shock, pushing themselves against the doorway, trembling. As I landed on new front paws, I felt them buckle under me, and I collapsed to the floor. Should've known that I wouldn't be able to pull of advanced magic like that.

"Pepper spray?" I heard Joe mutter to Kevin as I got back to my feet – um, paws. That was enough for me. I'd scared them enough, I wanted to be human again. Doing the same thing again was hard though, because this time I didn't have enough energy to completely cover myself with the magic. After five futile tries, I finally was able to change myself back into some sort of human form. I didn't even know if it was my own. I couldn't stay awake to find out.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Nick?" I heard Kevin whisper. "Nick, wake up."

Joe shook me, hard, rolling me over so I was lying on my back instead of my stomach. "Nick, we won't hurt you," he said. I didn't believe him for a second.

"Do you think he's okay?" Kevin said nervously.

"Of course not," Joe replied. "He's a wizard. He's never going to be 'okay.'"

"We love you anyway, Nick," Kevin whispered in my ear. "Don't forget that."

Were they telling the truth, or was it a lie? Being friends seemed out of the question, but being enemies would drive all of us into paranoia. I could never fight against them, never kill them, never hurt them. But we were brothers, bound by blood, and who would I be to revoke that bond?

You know, if we actually were brothers to begin with. I still could be adopted.

"Nick, please, wake up!" Joe was practically screaming in my ear. But I couldn't move my own body. I felt paralyzed by my lack of energy.

I heard the door open, and the sound of soccer cleats on the hardwood floor. Frankie, Mom, and Dad were back. Alex was probably hiding somewhere outside. And I was trapped in my own body, lying on the floor. "Oh my gosh," my mom gasped, coming to my side. "Nicholas?"

Still couldn't move. Not even a single finger. It was a wonder I could still hear. "What happened?" my dad asked my brothers.

"Uh..." Joe and Kevin held that out for a while. Were they really considering covering for me? Did they care that much to betray their own kind? "He came back," Kevin managed to stutter out, "and he said he wasn't feeling good... maybe he's sick or something."

"I'm going upstairs," I heard Frankie call. No one responded to him.

Great, I thought. Now they're going to take me to the hospital. That was the last thing I wanted. I had to find someway to revive myself. I tried rolling over, opening my eyes, twitching my fingers, wiggling my toes, talking, even. Soon I felt cold fingers on my neck, someone taking my pulse. "His heartbeat is steady," Dad commented. "I don't know what's wrong with him. He won't respond?"

"No," Joe said. "I mean, we startled him with this." I didn't know what "this" was, but it was accompanied by a gasp.

"Boys," Mom whispered. "We told you not to go in that room. Nick and Frankie don't know it even exists. There's some pretty dangerous stuff in there, things that could kill an innocent mortal like Nick or someone as young as Frankie." So I was still innocent, and mortal, in their eyes. That came as a relief, partially. "You got lucky. He should be fine. He's probably not under the glom." She sounded unsure, though. I felt myself being lifted up off the ground. Still couldn't move. "We'll bring him upstairs, put him in his bed... he'll wake up eventually. Stay down here and put that back where you found it. Your dad and I will bring your brother upstairs."

So there would be no running away with Alex today. Not that I could do something as easy as move. Nope, still stuck, trapped in some sort of physical shell that wasn't mine to control. The person who had picked me up shifted my weight around in their arms. I felt like a rag doll. "The glom," whispered my dad. "They did it, didn't they?"

"Yes," Mom replied. "It reacts different on every human, every wizard. Currently he's completely under Joe's control. We can't let Joe know that, or he'll manipulate him." She sighed. "When I agreed to raise these boys as my own, I didn't know I'd be dealing with stuff like this. Not just the teenage rockstar junk – the part about Nick just not being..." She trailed off. "It doesn't seem right."

"Nick is not their true brother."

"No, he's not." She paused. "Remember the book Stella was reading a month or so ago? The one about the vampire-angels?" I did. The Blue Bloods books, by Melissa de la Cruz. Something about vampires. I hadn't cared, the whole Twilight thing had forced me to get rid of all thoughts of vampires. Those books were... ugh. Stella had said the Blue Blood ones were much better, but I hadn't cared. Kevin might have read them. I wasn't sure. My dad must have responded somehow to this question, because my mom continued, "Well, I picked it up and read it. What caught my attention was Abbadon and Arazel. The twin angels of the Apocalypse. They were in the book. Sometimes I have reason to believe that Joe and Kevin..." Another pause. "We were told these boys were special. Something that had never been seen before. Something to fear. Naturally, we were perfect for the job."

"Of course," agreed my father.

"But we were never told why they were special."

"No."

There was silence. "We're in over our heads. These boys are more powerful than anything we'd ever thought."

"You mentioned the angels. What about Nick?"

"That was strictly a metaphor. The books got me thinking, that was all." One more pause. "Michael. The pure of heart."

We came to a stop, and I was gently lowered into my bed. I felt my limp body hit the pillows, and someone pull the sheets up. "Goodnight, Nick," my mother whispered.

This whole conversation gave me a lot to think about. Quite a lot. Momentarily, Alex was forgotten in all this new stuff.

I was not Joe and Kevin's brother, after all. Nor was I the son of Tom and Sandy Lucas. No, I was someone living under the masquerade of their son, named Nicholas Jerry. I didn't know who my true parents were, I didn't know anything about where I came from. I didn't even know my true name.

Joe and Kevin weren't their sons, either, which made me feel a little bit better, but I was still alone.

No, Nick, you're not alone.

Someone's voice in my head, acting as my own thoughts, talking in my own mental voice. It took me a second to realize who it was, but I realized it was Alex.

Listen, this is hard enough for me to do. Pay attention.

I'm listening. It's not like I have a choice. You're inside my head.

Yeah. It's the first time I've done this spell. But you've got me, Nick, and you're not alone. If you're ever in danger again from any of their kind, you can come back to me. Waverly Place. Remember that, and remember me, Nick.

She was gone from my head before I could think one more thing – I love you.

Sleep came easy, yet it came hard. I could hardly stay in a truly unconscious state as I became aware of Joe's mental being having a presence in my head. He didn't know it, but he had control, and I had none.

But I wasn't alone. I felt like Alex was still with me, even as she was gone.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

**(third person)**

_leave my door open just a crack  
__(please take me away from here)  
__'cause i feel like such an insomniac  
__(please take me away from here)  
__why do i tire of counting sheep  
__(please take me away from here)  
__when i'm far too tired to fall asleep_

_to ten million fireflies  
__i'm weird 'cause I hate goodbyes  
__i get misty eyes as they said farewell..._

_...i'd like to make myself believe  
__that the planet earth turns slowly  
__it's hard to say that i'd rather stay  
__awake when i'm asleep  
__'cause everything is not what it seems..._

_...because my dreams are bursting at the seams._

Alex appeared in the lair, still clutching Nick's wand, drumsticks, and guitars. Suddenly, as the connection between the two wizards broke, Alex felt like she had been chopped in half.

She'd done the spell wrong. By not pulling away properly, she'd left part of her soul in Nick's body. And she had part of his. A permanent bond, now. The two were one. She'd just gone and entwined his spirit with hers.

What the hell had she done?


	5. dual confessions

**A/N: The site's been spazzing all day. It's driving me insane. Especially 'cause I've had this chapter done for a while and I'm halfway done with the next one at this point. Anyway, this is the chapter. Enjoy. I'm being blunt because the site could spazz again and I'll lose the chance to post this again.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own WOWP or JONAS.**

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**chapter five: dual confessions**

**(a**lex**pov)**

I'd messed it up. Like, seriously. Even Justin didn't know how to use that spell, and if he did, he would read the instructions. But I'm not Justin, and I don't read instructions. Suddenly, I wished I did. Now I was part of Nick and Nick was part of me. And I barely even knew the boy.

Still, was it wrong to be in love with him?

"Alex!" It was Justin. "There you are! You're not trying to skip out on work again, are you?"

"No," I whispered. "I just..." I couldn't find words for it. Justin was going to find out eventually, and make fun of me for it either way. "I messed up, okay?"

"On what?" he asked, but I didn't reply, dropping Nick's stuff in the center of the room as I ran out. My older brother followed me out. Why did Nick like his brothers so much, anyway? To me, my brothers were just big huge meddling busybodies. Mainly Justin. "Whose stuff is that?"

"It's none of your business," I snapped, grabbing an apron.

"Yes, it is," he insisted. "Alex... if you were using magic to get boys again..."

I rolled my eyes. "No, I was using magic to save a boy and I messed up! Now leave me alone, Justin, I have work to do." Work that I wasn't really planning on doing, and Justin knew that.

"Alex Russo? Do work? Ha." Justin grabbed my wrist. "How did you mess up?"

"I'm not telling you," I scoffed, trying to pull away, but my brother was stronger than I gave him credit for. "Let go of me!"

"As the smartest and the most responsible wizard in this family, I command that you tell me," Justin proclaimed.

"I'll tell you if you let me go!"

He totally fell for it, letting go of my wrist and letting me run away. "Alex! Come back!" At least he couldn't use magic in the middle of a crowded sandwich shop. He was powerless as I skipped upstairs. Of course, he followed me. "Please, Alex? I won't tell anyone," he begged.

"Oh, come on. You'll go running to Dad right away."

"I won't. Promise."

"Do you really need to know everything, Justin?" As much as I didn't want to tell him, I wanted to tell someone. Maybe I could trust him. Maybe he could help us. I mean, everyone thought that the hunters were extinct. Three was better than two, I guess. If you could still count me and Nick as separate people. "Fine. But you can't make fun of me."

"I won't." Justin's eyes were round.

I sat down on the orange couch and sighed. "Yesterday, I met this boy, and-"

"Maybe I don't care, actually," he said, sitting down next to me.

"Shut up, Justin." I paused again. "His name was Nick, and he told me that he came from a family of wizard hunters, of Dark Angels. But he wasn't one of them, he thought he was human. But he wasn't, he was a wizard. Living among his enemies. And, well, he was really cute, so I offered him a place to stay."

"Girls." Justin snorted, interrupting me again. "I just want to hear the part when you mess up."

"I'm getting there," I snapped back impatiently. "So this morning I went down and I thought I'd teach him a couple things, and, well... somehow we ended up at his house, like his old house, and his brothers were there, and... he got discovered, and I had to leave because they kinda... um, attacked him. They have some sort of thing called a glom, and I think it's like mind control. And while Nick was unconscious, but still sort of conscious, under the glom, I think, I did a spell that got me inside his mind so that I could talk to him, but it backfired and now I-"

"Combined your souls," Justin finished for me. "The spell you used is a forbidden one, isn't it?" I nodded. "And you didn't say the counter-spell." I nodded again. "Alex, you should know right away that there's no way to undo this. And considering that the DA are involved, then if they discover what he is, they'll be able to trace the spell back to you." He sighed. "These spells are forbidden for a reason."

"Since when do I listen to the rules?"

He shrugged. "When they came up with the spell, the same thing happened to the creators. There's a whole bunch of abilities that come attached to it, but..." He looked at me. "It's extremely dangerous. Normally it'll kill both wizards involved. Some have tried it on purpose to simply link themselves for all eternity, but... you have to be really crazy and in love to do that. About 90% of the time it doesn't work."

"Don't tell me you wouldn't want to do it with Juliet." I smiled my evilest smile.

"Here's the last part. If one of the bonded gets hurt, gets sick, the other does too. If one dies, so does the other." He gave me a look. "And since Juliet can't die, she'd be in a state of insanity and paranoia. I wouldn't want to put her through that." Big words. I hated big words.

My mind flew through all the JONAS knowledge I had from Harper and other girls at school. "What about conditions or diseases they had before the bonding, say, like diabetes? Will I have to..." The thought of giving myself insulin shots everyday made me shudder, although I admired Nick for fighting it so valiantly.

"I don't know," Justin admitted. "Probably not. That's a preexisting condition. So, when are you going to tell Mom and Dad that you've combined your spirit with a complete stranger's?"

"He's not a complete stranger," I protested. "And I'm not going to tell them. Why would I do that?" I grabbed the TV remote, the first thing I could get my fingers to touch. "If you tell them, I swear, you will show up in the gutter dead tomorrow morning."

"I never said I would, Alex, relax." Justin lowered the TV remote that I was pointing at his head. "Wonderful weapon, by the way."

I rolled my eyes, but didn't let down my guard. "If anyone else hears of this, Justin..." I let my threat hang in the air, then skipped away back downstairs to cover my shift.

**~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~**

**(n**ick**pov)**

I don't know how much time had passed, but control came back to me slowly. I knew when I could open my eyes, when I could move my arms, my legs, but I waited for more strength, something I'd lost in the transformation.

There had to be something gained out of all that, though, because I felt something in my mind, a significant change. I didn't know what it was, but I reached out to it mentally, touching it with my mind. It wasn't something, but part of _someone. _Part of me had been chased away and there was this instead. But I couldn't feel angry at it, it was comforting, almost. I wanted to talk to it, which was a little odd, but I thought it could talk. Or whoever it belonged to could talk. And I think I knew who it belonged to.

_Um, Alex?_

The thing stirred in the back of my mind. _Oh my gosh, Nick, I'm sorry, I did something wrong with that other spell... _I caught fragments of a flashback in her thoughts, but never a complete one. Something along the lines of "...combined...spirits...forbidden...spell...abilities... link...eternity...insanity...paranoia..."

_I can honestly say that I'm really confused._

_Well... by accident... when the connection ended, I forgot to say the counter-spell... and now we're kinda, um, linked. Mentally. For... eternity._

It was all I could do to keep my eyes from flying open. _Like, forever?_

_Yeah. I'm so, so sorry._

Could I lie to her? _Um... it's okay. I think. I mean, this is cool. Telepathy. _It didn't really seem cool, though. I barely knew the girl.

_There are some not so cool parts about it. Can you come closer? I want to show you something. _I pulled myself closer to her being, and was suddenly engulfed in her flashback. There was a boy, about nineteen, talking to me. Or Alex, as I was seeing the world through her eyes. _That's Justin. My older brother, _she thought.

"If one of the bonded gets hurt, gets sick, the other does too. If one dies, so does the other," Justin was saying. He went on to talk about some Juliet girl and how she couldn't die... but I didn't really care. I'd probably just cursed Alex to death. As soon as my parents discovered what I truly was, or if Joe or Kevin told them, then she would die with me. That wasn't what I wanted.

_Nick... I'm really, really sorry. I honestly didn't mean for it to happen._

_I know you didn't, Alex. It's fine. Really. I'm sure we'll both get used to it._

_I hope so. For now, we can just ignore each other. If we need to talk, then we can "talk." Which is good, 'cause I don't have your cell number._

_Do you want it?_

_What's the point now? Yeah, I'll talk to you later. _She kinda pushed me out of her head. I wasn't insulted, by now I realized that was the kind of person Alex was.

So I lay there for a while more to think even more stuff over, but I couldn't make much reason out of it without research. I'd have to learn more about the spell, and to do that I'd have to go somewhere else.

"Nick?" I heard Joe whisper, and finally, I opened my eyes to see my "brother" looking down at me.

"What?" I mumbled, rolling over.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I did something I shouldn't have."

"Yeah, you didn't tell on me. Why?"

Joe looked away. "Because you're my brother, and brothers are always there for each other," he said softly.

After hearing what our "parents" had to say on that matter, our brotherly bond seemed completely irrelevant. "Joe... I'm not your brother," I said. "Mom and Dad, they were talking while they were bringing me upstairs, and I could hear them. They said that I wasn't your brother, and that we weren't their sons, and something about Abbadon and Arazel."

"Don't feed me that crap, Nick."

"It's true." We both turned around to see our mother. She showed no sign of knowing what I was. "It's time that we told all three of you the true story of your mysterious birth and the legend of the fallen Angels." Kevin heard this, and looked up from his book at where we were standing, then silently came over to join our little group by my bed.

I sat up and twiddled my fingers. "So I wasn't just hallucinating?"

"You were actually awake, or part of you was, and I'm surprised," she replied, glancing at Joe. "How much did you hear?"

"Most of it," I replied, but only because I knew that they could make me forget anything I heard. I'd heard everything, but if they knew that I'd heard the beginning and the part about the room of apparently "secret" stuff, I would have no memory of anything whatsoever. "Not the part at the beginning."

"Good," she mumbled absentmindedly. "Nick is right, you know. He is not your true brother. And none of you are our sons. Only Frankie is." We all looked around, but the little nine-year-old was nowhere to be seen. That didn't mean he wasn't listening, however. "You must promise never to tell another soul this story," she said. We all nodded. Joe and Kevin meant it. I didn't.

"Who is our mother?" Joe whispered.

Mom sighed. "No one knows. All that is known for certain is that you two are the most powerful of our kind to walk the earth since the Betrayal."

The Betrayal. We all knew of that, it was like a fairy-tale that didn't end well. It used to give me nightmares when I was little, but I'd never thought much of it. Now, I understood.

"We're going to do something special," she whispered to us, and took a purple metallic thing out of her pocket. It looked like a case you'd put your glasses in. "Hold on, boys."

With a finger on the strange item, we were whisked away to an alternate universe with barely the blink of an eyelash.


	6. victory of the people

**A/N: So proud of this chapter. I didn't even think of this plot twist until today. Happy happy. Complete with a beautiful cliffy at the end. -sigh-**

**Disclaimer: I don't own JONAS or WOWP. However, the whole concept of Adrian, Corbett, and Kione... MINE. All. Mine. (I wish Nicholas was mine... -sigh-)**

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**chapter six: victory of the people**

_**The two 'angels' of the prophecy were Adrian and Corbett. Together, they were the beginning of the Dark Angels, the two who we all descend from today. During the medieval times, they were sent down to Earth to take human forms as punishment for stealing a power only possessed by the highest ranking of these angel-spirits, for betraying the power to the mortals. Today, this is called the Betrayal.**_

It was like a Disney ride, like Spaceship Earth. A mysterious voice told us the story as we were whisked through some sort of vortex. All my senses seemed to be blocked, so that I couldn't see, and the only thing I could hear was the voice.

Until, of course, we came to a sudden stop and went flying into a puddle of mud, making a spectacular splash. "Shit, Stella's gonna kill us," Joe said, spitting out some dirt that had ended up in his mouth. Sure enough, the three of us were covered in mud, while our "mother" was standing right outside the puddle, perfectly clean.

"Joseph Adam Lucas, watch your tongue." She gave him a ice-cold stare.

"You're not really our mom, so why should you care?" Joe snapped in reply, the mud dripping down his face in an amusing way as he stood up.

"Like it or not, I'm still your legal guardian." I'd never seen my mom act this way, returning the attitude that Joe was giving her. She offered Kevin a hand, who took it gratefully, shaking the mud out of his hair. "Follow me, boys."

I scrambled to my feet and followed them down a road towards a small town, running my fingers through my hair, trying to get the mud out of it. "I call first shower," Joe muttered.

"Second," I echoed, although I wasn't sure how long exactly I would be sticking around the house.

Kevin scowled. "There has got to be a trick to that game!"

Our mom rolled her eyes. "Pay attention, you three. This will explain a lot."

We watched, silently, from a couple of feet away as a group of villagers, carrying pitchforks like in a bad movie, forced two little boys outside. They were crying, and as they cried, rain began to fall from the sky. It tasted salty on my tongue. Tears. "Did I mention that Stella is going to murder us?" Joe muttered, taking off his drenched shirt. I considered doing the same, but instead hugged my arms close to me as an attempt to keep my body heat in.

"Look." Kevin pointed, a look of shock upon his face. "Joe, that's us."

I took a closer look at the two boys, and sure enough... they looked like mirror images of my older brothers at eight years old. "You will be better off out here," a woman said, tears in her own eyes. "There is no one to judge you by what power you possess. No. Here, you will be judged by your ability to survive." She hugged the two boys close to her, and they hugged her back, the rain falling faster than ever, drenching Joe, Kevin, and me. It was miserably wet and cold, with the mud and the tears clinging to our skin and clothes. Joe was right, Stella would kill all three of us in cold blood. Could we count on Macy to save us? Our "mother" was still dry. "Good luck, Adrian and Corbett. May the gods be with you," the woman, the assumed mother of the boys, whispered in their ear, yet we could hear them just fine from twenty feet away.

Suddenly, we were thrust into another vortex of time and space as we were whisked away to another time in the story. This time, there was no mud to land in, just a field of grass. This was worse, though. Grass stains. I saw Joe bite his tongue to keep from saying anything, but I had a pretty good idea of what he was thinking. It was colorful, whatever it was. "Nick," he whispered so only I could hear, "do you know a spell that could fix this? So Stella won't kill us?" I shook my head, stunned that he was asking me for help. Me, his wizard brother. I'd ask Alex later.

The people in the field were the two called Adrian and Corbett. Now they were all grown up, and they looked exactly like my brothers. They couldn't see us; we were like ghosts, but instead of being dead, we simply weren't born yet.

Looking over to Joe and Kevin, they also looked completely stunned as they watched what the two boys were capable of. "I think it's obvious now," our mom said softly. "Adrian. The dark one." She pointed to Joe. "And Corbett. The raven." She pointed to Kevin.

My brothers' eyes drifted over to me. I shrugged. I didn't need another name to go by. Just Nick was fine. "Nicholas," Kevin said, pointing to me. "And I don't know what your name means."

"Shut up, Kevin."

"My name's Corbett." The boy looked proud of it, too. Proud of being an incarnation of a devil-angel-spirit? Ha. I was proud of being my own spirit, not some living version of a Dark-Angel-biblical fairy-tale.

"That's too bad, 'cause I'm going to call you Kevin." I rolled my eyes. "Ridiculous."

The "real" Adrian and Corbett, meaning the two who were discussing something as the two I considered to be called Joe and Kevin argued about our names while lying in the grass in soaked clothing, were talking as well. "So we attack tonight?" Adrian was whispering.

"Tonight," Corbett agreed. He seemed ten times saner than Kevin. How exactly was this possible? The thing was, what were they attacking? I racked my mind to try and remember the story, but I was drawing a blank. The curly-haired boy seemingly reached into air and a sword appeared in his hands.

Joe and Kevin's eyes lit up. "Can we do that?" they whispered.

"Not exactly, no." Their faces fell as fast as they'd lit up. I snickered softly. I could do that, if I knew how. "They don't exactly win the battle."

As she said this, we were transported yet again to a new place, where Adrian and Corbett were stopped quickly by a mysterious man. I looked him over thoroughly, seeing if there was any possibility of me being this person, but he looked nothing like me. "We send you to Earth to punish you, and you make a game out of it?" he asked incredulously. "You should know better than to abuse the power and use it against the mortals. I am disappointed in both of you."

"We are sorry, master," they chorused in unison.

It was dizzying, the way that we were pulled through the story, and I begun to forget how to think, due to a massive headache. Scenes showed Adrian and Corbett doing a lot of stuff, and staying true to their word, this time helping the mortals, even saving their "mother" on her deathbed. Of course, like any other cliched story, this came with a catch – the two began to fight and fight and fight. It was on a snowy evening that the two met their demise.

Snowy was no understatement, either. It was insanity. Weren't we tortured enough by the weather, which would eventually cause us to be tortured even more by Stella? Nope, we needed snow too. What was next, hail? Freezing rain? Frogs?

I didn't need to watch two men who looked like grown-up versions of Joe and Kevin duel to their deaths. I remembered what happened now. When the two died, betrayed by their own brother, their power was sucked out of them by an evil force before they could rise to heaven. The wizards had taken the power and manipulated it in such a way that it existed the way it did today. The angels were outraged, but this time, it wasn't Adrian and Corbett's fault. In heaven, they possessed the powers that any normal Dark Angel would possess on Earth today.

_**You did what you could. There will be one more time we will need your services. **_A voice that was not a voice echoed through the room. The fallen angel-warriors bowed to the air, their eyes closed.

_**It is believed that you will come again during the time of the millennial, raised to be stars, and fall as heroes at the hand of a loved one, but not without sacrifice. For at their death of the second time, the forbidden power will finally be mine.**_

"But we have to keep the wizards in check," Corbett said.

_**Yes. We do. You still have a bit of the power left, no? **_The two nodded. **_Each of you give half of the power to me. _**They did that, handing over two translucent balls of light that looked similar to the power that was inside me, except it glowed red, not blue. It disappeared into the air, then swirled around the room, around us, then disappeared once more. _**Four humans now possess this power. They will be the human society of the Dark Angels, to try and recapture the power so the job will be easy for you two when you must return to Earth. They are mortals, however. You are immortal, and have twice the power to show for it. Use this wisely, boys. **_With those words, everything went black.

The last landing had to be the most painful of them all (rug burn), but the pain was numbed by the words I'd just heard. A loved one. Namely, me. Joe and Kevin didn't seem to pick up on this, but I did. I was the one who was supposed to kill them. "Adrian and Corbett," Joe whispered, sitting up on the floor as I rolled over onto my side. Our "mother" was sitting on one of the chairs in the firehouse while we were all crumpled up on the floor in balls. "Really?"

"Really," she replied. "Adrian, I'm sorry..."

"Don't call me that," Joe snapped. "I'm Joe. Joseph. Joe Lucas, Joe of JONAS. I'm not ready to be someone like that."

"You have the respect of every one of our kind," she said softly. "We are literally supposed to bow at your feet. You are the creators of us, of our power."

I stood up. "Well, Joe – I'm sorry, the highest angel Adrian," I scoffed, "if you don't want that shower... this doesn't really concern me, does it?"

"Nicholas. Sit." She pointed to the ground. I sat, scowling. "There was a reason you came. If it didn't concern you, you would have been left behind. No, you are not one of us."

I took a deep breath. "Then what am I?"

_**You are me. I am you. **_A voice inside my head. It wasn't Alex's, but yet it was so familiar... it was the voice from the story, the legend. **_Together, we can defeat the wizards. With you, boy, we will finally triumph once again._**

"No," I whispered. "No, you can't use me. No, no, no, no."

My family stared at me like I was crazy. I was, after all, talking to myself. _**I can use you any way I want to, **_the voice said to me. _**I am inside you. For all intensive purposes, I am Nicholas Lucas. I am the one who will make the prophecy come true.**_

_What prophecy? _This time, I was careful to speak to the being inside my head.

_**You remember it. The one that said you're going to kill your brothers. You are very smart, for a mortal boy. Rebellious, too. You were not supposed to find out about your wizard powers that I gave you. That girl. Alex. You like her?**_

_Maybe. _So he didn't know that she was also a part of me. Having three different souls in my body... I wasn't quite sure what to do. _Why do you ask?_

_**You must destroy her.**_

_I can't._

_**You will do as I say.**_

_But I can't. If I kill her, I'll kill myself too._

_**Then that will be fair. It is only your soul it will kill, no? This body will be mine, and I can finally take the power back from this world. **_My eyes locked on Kevin and Joe, who were staring at me with wide eyes. I looked away, in pain. It was he who had moved my eyes. He could control every part of me but my own thoughts.

_You're not going to hurt them, either. I'm not going to let you use me._

_**You are stubborn, boy. Remember this. Your soul is mortal, alone you are weak, and you are mine. Without me, you are nothing. With me, you can be the most powerful being alive. Work with me, and you can be more powerful than you can imagine.**_

_It's not worth it._

_**Oh, but mortal boy, it is. The name you currently go by, your second name, Nicholas – it means victory of the people. Consider me "the people". You are my victory, my key to power.**_

_And you are my demise._

_**You are good. You recognize that. Yes, in this process, you will die, but you will live. I can make your mortal spirit immortal. After you kill your brothers, you can spend eternity with them.**_

_They would never forgive me. No. I want to be human, I want to die, I want to be who I was meant to be._

_**Oh, but this is who you are meant to be. The reason no one knows where you came from is because you came from nowhere. You have no mother, no father. Your true name is Kione. He who comes from nowhere.**_

_Nowhere?_

_**Nowhere. Now, Kione, listen. Here is what you must do...**_

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**A/N: Attention silent readers! I know you exist. Review, or the cliff-hanger will hang forever and I'll have to send the story to chibiyugixyami and silvereyed angel somehow so they can read it. SO REVIEW OR NICK DIES. (Um, just kidding... but seriously. Review.)**


	7. the saltwater room

**A/N: It's 5:15 in the morning, and I'm still awake... (I've already slept a little, maybe about five hours?) Anyway, this is kinda a filler chapter, but... eh, whatever. For those of you who aren't familiar with Owl City or the Jonas Brothers (but oh god, please know who they are), you should know that the two songs are called "The Saltwater Room" (Owl City) and "Lovebug" (Jonas Brothers) and I DON'T OWN THEM. But yet again, if you don't know who the Jonas Brothers are and you're actually reading this... get your head checked. Like, seriously.**

**There's a horrible cliffy at the end. I apologize now. Anyway, I don't own WOWP or JONAS or Owl City or the Jonas Brothers.**

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**chapter seven: the saltwater room**

**(j**oe**pov)**

A bloodcurdling scream came from upstairs. Kevin shrieked and fell out of his chair. "Boys! Get up here!" a demanding voice called.

Nick laughed, a rare grin upon his face. It was if he was trying too hard to be happy. He was hiding something still. "Joe, you were so right."

"When am I not?" I replied.

"Most of the time." The smile lingered, then faded. "Come on. It might be less painful if we go now." He helped Kevin up off the ground and dragged him upstairs. Our older brother rubbed his head as we all went up the stairs.

Stella was standing there, holding my grass-stained jeans and soaking wet, mud-covered shirt. "What did you three do, take a mud bath? In your clothes?" Her pretty brown eyes were turning black. "Okay, everyone knows you don't-"

"We fell into a mud puddle, okay? We're sorry. We won't do it again." I rolled my eyes. "Stella, seriously. Worked up much?"

"These clothes are ruined, now," she said, glaring at me. "After the mud, and the grass stains, and... tear stains?"

"Salt water," Kevin muttered. It hadn't been us that was crying... well, technically it had, but that didn't count. Adrian and Corbett. Me and Kevin. My eyes flickered over to Nick, who had stuffed his hands in his pockets and was looking at the floor, avoiding everyone's gaze. It didn't even look like he was listening. It was the same kind of thing he had done yesterday when we'd gotten back from the whole time travel ordeal. Same look on his face. Pain. Agony. He shuddered slightly, then looked up again, his eyes empty of emotion.

Stella looked over to him. "Nick? You okay?"

"I'm fine," he whispered hoarsely. "Absolutely fine."

This had to be my favorite part of the power. I closed my eyes for a second and looked into Nick's mind, read his thoughts. This time, however, he was concentrating on what Stella was saying... then something else. _Joe, get the hell out of my head._

My eyes snapped open. Nick was glaring chocolate brown daggers into my skull. "Sorry," I muttered, and tried the same thing with Kevin, knowing he could hear my thoughts too._ What's up with Nick? _I thought.

_I don't know. Every time I try to listen in, he knows I'm listening. Which, I mean, I'm kinda staring at him, which is odd, but..._

_Then don't stare at him. It's that easy._

"Are you paying attention?" Stella snapped her fingers in my face. "Honestly, Joe. I'm talking to you. And you, Kevin." Nick snickered. I rolled my eyes. The boy thought he was so cool, he was a wizard... and Stella simply didn't understand. She was completely human. Normal. "So, I expect no more stains of any kind," she said, looking at all of us.

"Yes, ma'am." I exchanged a look with Kevin.

"Good." She threw my ruined shirt against the wall. "So, where were you guys yesterday? I called you, like, five times."

Nick shrugged. "Out." He didn't elaborate at all.

"Out where?"

"Out," I muttered. "Family thing. You wouldn't get it." Yeah. She'd never believe us if we told her that Nick wasn't actually our real brother and our parents weren't our real parents. That was something we'd have to keep to ourselves. He looked enough like our brother, with the same curly hair as Kevin (and me, although I would never really admit that I straighten my hair). Everyone could go on believing that. That was fine.

"Besides, I know that Macy was worried about you too. She thought you, like, died or something. Which, you know, upset her. If you don't pick up her first phone call, she'll automatically jump to conclusions." Stella twirled her pretty blonde hair around her finger. Kevin sat down in a chair, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nick slowly inch away towards his area. We all disregarded that, but I was worried about my little brother who wasn't actually my brother.

"Well, we're fine. Does she know that? Do I need to call her?" Kevin said, an edge of anxiousness in his voice.

I looked over in his direction. "Hey, I didn't know you had a thing for Macy," I teased.

He glared at me. Great, now they were both mad at me. "Joe," he said, trying to stay calm, "I agree with Nick: get the hell out of my head."

Nick, from over by his desk, laughed and sent another pair of dagger-eyes at me. Stella looked really, really confused. "How are you in his head?"

"Figure of speech," I muttered. "Come on, let's go get something to eat. The city's not far away, we can go there. Any of you interested in coming?"

Nick shook his head and said nothing, Kevin nodded and so did Stella. Simple enough. I was ready to leave the supernatural behind for a couple of hours and hang out with someone human and normal. "Well then, let's go," I said, and together we slid down the poles. "We can pick up Macy along the way. I'm sure she'll be thrilled."

**(a**lex**pov)**

It was a slow, slow day. Stuck on a double shift as payment for Justin keeping my secret, I had six hours to kill and no one came in. Feeling oddly helpful, I checked and made sure that the open sign was showing in the door. (It was.)

As much as I actually wanted customers, which was odd to begin with, when three people walked in through the door, I wanted them to disappear. I knew them from magazines and posters and being inside their brother's head. Joe and Kevin Lucas. And two pretty girls, a blonde and a brunette, that I recognized as the two girls in the picture Nick had put in his bag when he was packing yesterday. I leaped over the counter and skittered up (nervously) to meet them. "Um, hi, welcome to Waverly Sub Station, I'm Alex, and I'll be your server for today. Can I interest you in our special, 'Meat Me In Little Italy'?" I rolled my eyes at this point, trying to seem calm, but these were two members of the enemy that were standing in front of me. Leading them to a table, I gave them menus and pointed to the picture of the special, looking away from Kevin's curious stare.

"Aren't you enthusiastic," Joe said, staring at the menu, then looking up to glare at the blonde girl. She glared right back.

"Can I get you something to drink?" I asked, biting my lip. Where was Nick? Was he okay? And I didn't have a number to call him... No, wait. I could just ask him, using the mind-link. Duh. You knew that before, Alex.

After taking their orders and giving them to Max, who was working the kitchen at the time, I sat down behind the counter again and closed my eyes. _Hey, Nick. Thought you'd like to know that your brothers and two girls are at the sub station._

_Well, they said they were going out to lunch. _He didn't sound surprised at all, rather bored and a little aggravated. Who knew that a mental tone could carry so much emotion?

_Why aren't you here? _I asked, hoping he wasn't hurt or anything.

_I needed some time alone._

_Oh. Am I bugging you?_

_No. You're just one of three voices in my head, including my own._

My eyes opened in surprise. _What? Three?_

_Um, yeah. Turns out I'm a creation of the devil. Sorry. _I could tell he was at least being partially sarcastic, but he was still being serious too. He was Nick Lucas. Of course he would be serious. _Well, not exactly the devil._

_Haha. You're kidding, right?_

_I'm Nick Lucas. I'm not really the one to joke around. You can go and ask my brothers. _He paused for a second. _No, honestly. The only reason that I exist is because some really powerful guy up in heaven needed a physical shell to take over the world in. He's aiming to take the 'magical existence' back from everyone, the wizards and the Angels. And he didn't want to spend seventeen years as a human boy, so... here I am. A creation to be used to his benefit. _This didn't please him at all. _So now I can officially be labeled insane. I've got your voice in my head, and I've got his. And my own. And that's not the worst of it. I have to kill my brothers, and I have to kill you._

I couldn't even think. Me? He couldn't kill me. He'd kill himself. _So basically he's asking for your own death, to put it as bluntly as you did._

_Exactly. Except he doesn't know that you're in my head as well. And we won't know unless I choose to tell him, which I won't._

I must have made some weird noise of some sort, because Joe, Kevin, the two girls, and Max were all staring at me. "Um, sorry," I said, scrambling to make up some lame excuse. "My, uh, friend just told me some big news."

"You're not talking on a phone," Joe said. "Or texting, or really saying anything."

"He's telepathic, duh," I said, rolling my eyes like this was so obvious to begin with. Max's eyes were wide. Damn it, he'd believed me. He'd be the only one to believe the truth.

"And imaginary," coughed the blonde.

I smirked at her and resumed my meditative state. _What are the names of the two girls? _I asked Nick.

_Well, Stella went with them and they said they'd pick up Macy. Stella would be the blonde, Macy the brunette. But yet again, I can't see them._

_The mind link has to be stronger than just telepathy. See if you can come closer and see everything the way I see it._

_Um... okay? _He tried, he really did, and it was odd. Before long, his presence was even stronger in my mind. _Whoa, _I heard him think, but it wasn't even directed at me. We were so close that we could hear each other's thoughts. Wow. _Yeah, that's Stella and Macy, _he said, his mental voice clear as he left.

_Thanks. So, how much longer until you have to kill me?_

_You talk about it so casually, like it's not even a problem. _He paused again. _I'll put it off for as long as I can, but he might be able to control me in ways I haven't realized yet. Alex... I'd never kill you on purpose. I promise._

I opened my eyes again only to meet three pairs of brown eyes and one pair of hazel staring at me from the table, and the burning of Max's gaze in my back. _I know you wouldn't, Nick, _I replied, and glared at everyone back. "What's your problem?" I snapped.

"You're whimpering," Macy said, "like a dog." She quickly added, "Not that you are a dog, or anything."

"My imaginary friend apologizes," I said sarcastically.

"Does she have a name?" Stella asked with the same sarcastic tone.

I glared more specifically at her. "_His_ name is Nick."

"That's cool, 'cause I have a brother named Nick," Kevin announced. Joe hit him on the shoulder then smiled at me. I smiled back and grabbed their food.

"So, where is Nick?" I asked casually, bringing their food and drinks over.

"How do you know that I'm not Nick?" Joe retorted quickly.

"Because you're Joe. Everyone knows that." I rolled my eyes.

The boys exchanged a long glance. "Well, since you seem to know our names... this is Stella, and that's Macy," Kevin said, pointing. As if I didn't already know. Yet again, they'll never know that I can telepathically communicate with their brother. "And Nick's just not here. He's at home. Alone, I think our parents are out too." He wasn't allowed to elaborate anymore, Joe hit him on the head pretty hard.

"Well, tell him I say hi." With that, I skipped away to the lair with a plan in mind. Pulling out my wand, I performed the teleportation spell, doing it perfectly and ending up on the upper floor of the firehouse. "Hey," I said.

Nick looked up from his guitar and smiled. "What are you doing here?"

"Visiting you." I sat down on the floor in front of him. "I mean, your brothers said you were alone and I should go back soon, but..." I looked into his brown eyes, then looked away before I could do anything that would betray my feelings. "Um, I kinda missed you. And your brothers think I'm incredibly strange."

"Ignore what they think, it's probably not significant anyway." He picked up a guitar. "Listen, this is kinda for you." He plucked out a soft little guitar melody and began to sing.

_time together isn't ever quite enough  
__when you and i are alone, i've never felt so at home  
__what will it take to make or break this hint of live  
__only time, only time_

_when we're apart whatever are you thinking of  
__if this is what i call home, why does it feel so alone  
__so tell me darling, do you wish we'd fall in love  
__yeah, all the time, all the time_

_all the subways around create a great sound  
__to my motion fatigue, farewell with your ear to a seashell  
__you can hear the waves in underwater caves  
__as if you were actually in a saltwater room..._

The song ended with the same intro out, and morphed into a different little melody. He smiled softly at me, his eyes sparkling.

_called you for the first time yesterday  
__finally found the missing part of me  
__felt so close but you were far away  
__left me without anything to say_

_now i'm speechless, over the edge i'm just breathless  
__i never thought that i'd catch this lovebug again  
__hopeless, head over heels in the moment  
__i never thought that i'd get hit by this lovebug again..._

He obviously considered continuing, but didn't, setting down the guitar. I was absolutely memorized. "No, keep playing."

There was something wrong, 'cause he didn't respond. His smile quickly faded as a dull and distant expression crossed his face and he fell back in the chair, his brown eyes glassy but open.

"Nick!" I screamed, shaking his shoulders. He didn't respond. "Nick! Answer me! Please!"

I got no reply. Shaking, I lifted him out of the chair and into the bed in the floor. I was starting to cry by now. Something was wrong.

It was after five minutes that he spoke, but it was clear right away that it was not actually Nick speaking. His chocolate eyes, now shining with a hint of an evil and sinister glint, were like daggers being sent into my skin. "Relax, young one," he said, and I started shaking even more.

"What did you do with Nick!?" I shrieked at him.

"Nicholas is fine," he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. I immediately wrenched it off. "I cannot and will not hurt him. He is a part of me."

_Alex, I'm fine. Don't do anything reckless. I'm here. Don't worry._

"I want to talk to him," I breathed.

"I am afraid that is not possible at the moment," the spirit in Nick's body replied, smiling slightly as he watched my reaction. "He is fine. That is all I can tell you. Is that not that good enough?"

"Of course it's not!" I snapped.

He scowled, not at me, but at something I could not hear. "I am sorry," he said, turning his attention back to me. "Alexandra, it is important to note that if you truly love this boy, you would stay away from him."

_Alex... he means it._

I took a breath, knowing that Nick was right but not wanting to admit it. "Mr... whatever you might be. You're not Nick, you don't have any right to tell us what to do or not do. If I love him, and I'm not saying that I do, I have every right to see him and not stay away." _I'm sorry, _I added to Nick.

"Both of you do not know what I am. You will never know. That is unimportant. What truly matters is the future that I am here to carry out. I must kill you along with every other wizard and Angel on this planet. I take no one side; I am not a Dark Angel creation. I work as my own boss. I take orders from no one. Nicholas, however, takes orders from me. I am more powerful than him. I can possess him, take away everything he has. Control over his own physical shell. He is stuck inside me. That can be permanent. But I am not that mean. Alexandra, you are treading on thin ice. Leave before I decide to eliminate you now."

"Now?" I whispered.

_Now. _Nick sounded like he was in pain. _Alex, please. I don't want him to hurt you._

I took a step back and pulled out my wand, holding it out only as a defense. I couldn't hurt him, because I'd hurt Nick. "I'd like to see you try," I hissed.

Nick's chocolate eyes suddenly became black, narrowed into slits. It was then that I realized that his wand was back at the sub shop. _No, Alex, don't. I love you. Don't provoke him. He will kill you. He will kill us._

_You... love me? _I blinked once spastically, looking right in the being's black eyes. They weren't Nick's anymore. _I love you too, Nick._

The spirit stared at me right back. "You have made a big mistake, Alexandra."


	8. gonna get caught

**A/N: First off (before I forget) I need to thank chibiyugixyami for offering to write (and actually writing) the first couple of paragraphs in Stella's POV, from "Our server, Alex..." to "...a smirk on his face." Writer's block. You have to hate it. So thank you thank you thank you a MILLION times over for writing that for me and getting me around that little road block.**

**I'm proud of this one because it's long and stuff actually happens. Haha. No more yucky filler chapters. Hopefully. (I'm pretty good at writing those.) So please review, and do whatever the other "R" in "R&R" is. (I'm blanking...)**

**Disclaimer: I don't own WOWP or JONAS. (But I would very much like them for Christmas this year... if anyone's feeling generous... -hint hint Santa!- LOL)**

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**chapter eight: gonna get caught**

**(s**tella**pov)**

Our server, Alex, walked back into the restaurant and leaned against the counter in what would have been a calm and cool way, if not for the terror in her larger than normal eyes and the tears that streaked down her cheeks. _What the heck is wrong with her? _I couldn't help but wonder as she wiped away he tears and took a few deep and calming breaths. She pasted a smile on her face and walked over to pick up our empty dishes.

"Is anything wrong?" I asked, not really knowing why I was concerned for this weirdo. She regarded me, rather coldly, but sighed.

"No, my boyfriend and I just had a... fight. That's all. He called while I was in the back."

I shrugged, sorry for her, but still not really moved by her story. The doorbell rang as someone walked in. We all turned and saw Nick walking in the door, hands in his pockets, his eyes shining in a sinister and kind of evil way; a smirk on his face. I'd never seen him like this, so distant and... un-Nick-ish. His eyes rested on Alex, who immediately looked away, as if in pain. What was her deal? Wasn't she asking about Nick earlier?

"Nick," Joe whispered, looking as if he recognized the look on his brother's face. "Nick, are you okay?"

"Yeah," he mumbled, looking to our table. "I'm fine." As he sat down in an empty chair, he shot another glare to Alex, who looked scared and hurt. What did she have against Nick? Or what did Nick have against her?

"Hungry?" Kevin asked, trying to ignore the strange expression on Nick's face. "We could get you something..."

He shook his head. "I'm fine," he repeated.

"Sure," I said, exchanging a glance with Macy. "Nick, seriously, what's up?"

"Nothing," he muttered, glaring at me now. His eyes were black. I had to do a double take. There was something wrong, and everyone knew it. Even little Max, the boy working the kitchen realized it and came to stand by his sister, who was trembling. Alex looked hurt the most, however, more hurt than Joe and Kevin combined. What was up with that?

We all kinda just sat there in silence for a minute, watching Nick. He didn't seem to notice, or he would have yelled at us if he was being normal and acting like Nick, which he wasn't. His eyes were blank, and he was kinda slumped back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. Joe shot a glare at Alex. She shrugged and motioned him and Kevin over behind the counter, leaving me, Macy, and Nick at the table.

After two minutes of awkward silence, Joe and Kevin came back over, eying Nick mysteriously. Nick, who finally seemed to be in control of himself, glared back, his eyes a normal brown once again. Alex smiled. "What is going on?" I demanded, standing up and startling everyone at the table.

Nick's gaze flickered to me. "Nothing," he said, his tone a bit lighter; almost sounding relieved. "I just have a really bad headache, that's all." Another glance at Alex, a friendly one this time. She flat-out grinned. Um, okay...?

Joe tried to regain his composure. "Nick, you sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine," he repeated.

Macy and I exchanged a glance. "Um, we'll go get the car," she offered, grabbing my hand. "Meet us outside when you're done." I couldn't object; I was pulled away before I could say anything.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

**(a**lex**pov)**

Well. They didn't suspect anything at all, did they? Sarcasm much implied. I hated the way that Stella girl looked at me like it was my fault. She would never get how much Nick's pain would hurt me, possibly hurt me more than my own. As for Macy... she was different. There was something about her, some supernatural quality that didn't make me resent her as much. She could be important. I couldn't quite place it.

Joe was glaring at me. Well, I owed him an explanation. _Go ahead and tell them, _Nick sent, sounding a little weary. I didn't acknowledge his message, just motioned his brothers over. A skeptical look on his face, Joe dragged Kevin over to me.

"What is it?" he snapped. "Are you doing this?" Well, they certainly recognized me from the whole scene at the firehouse yesterday.

"Listen, you can't yell at me or I'm not going to tell you," I snapped back. "There's two parts – one, um, Nick's currently being controlled by some evil spirit and two, I..." That was the one I was a bit unsure about telling them. "I kinda made a mistake with a spell that I did, and... well, I kinda bound us together. So... we can, like, telepathically communicate and stuff like that. It was a mistake, I swear. But that..." I looked over to Nick, who was sitting in the chair with a blank look on his face. The same one he'd had before at the firehouse, when he'd been possessed the first time. "...that's not my fault. I swear, there is some sort of higher being that's out to destroy the whole supernatural world. Wizards and angels alike. And he's using Nick to do that."

Joe actually rolled his eyes. Kevin looked like he believed me. "Joe, she's serious," he whispered. "You can talk to him? The real Nick?"

"Yes," I said. "He... he's stuck inside his own body. The spirit can control him, manipulate him. The spirit created him in the first place..." I scrambled to remember Nick's exact words. "Hold on. I can show you... you just need to get rid of the girls." Stella was staring at us, while Macy was looking at Nick. "One question, though – does Macy like Nick? Like, have a crush on him?"

Kevin narrowed his eyes. "You know, she better not. I mean, I don't think Nick really likes her back." He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. "I'm just saying that it would be better for Macy. So that she doesn't have her heart broken by him. I mean, we don't want to lose a fan..."

"Kevin has a crush on her," Joe added.

"Well, can't you guys, like, read minds?" I asked. "Would it be that hard to find out?"

Both boys looked sheepish. "Right."

As they headed back over to the table, Nick began to stir. His eyes were now a normal chocolate brown. I couldn't hold back a smile. That was Nick I knew, the Nick that I loved, the Nick that they knew as their brother. Just as Joe was about to speak, Stella stood up. "What is going on?" she demanded.

I exchanged a glance with Nick, and he smiled. I grinned back. "Nothing," he said nonchalantly. "I just have a really bad headache, that's all."

"Nick, you sure you're okay?" Joe asked, eying my reaction. Hopefully the brothers could tell from my reaction that it was their brother who was in control now.

"I'm fine," he repeated for what was probably the third time.

Macy looked to Stella. She was obviously worried. _She better not like Nick, _I found myself thinking. Wow. I really was jealous. "Um, we'll go get the car," she said, and I tried not to shout triumphantly. "Meet us outside when you're done." She dragged Stella out of the shop without another word.

Nick stood up too. "Joe, Kevin, I..." He paused. "I don't know how to explain it. I hope Alex did an okay job."

Kevin didn't respond, he just ran over to his brother and squeezed him tight in a hug. Rather reluctantly, Joe followed. "Nick!" Kevin squealed.

"Um, yeah?" Nick attempted to push his older brothers off him. It didn't work, but it certainly was a funny sight to watch. "That would be my name." _One of them, _he added to me in my head.

_What do you mean? _I asked, my brow furrowing. Joe and Kevin missed this reaction, but Nick didn't.

He smiled slightly. _When he created me, the spirit named me Kione. It literally means, "he who comes from nowhere." Lovely name, and a lovely meaning, isn't it? _He made a face, which made me giggle slightly. _It sounds more like a girl's name if you ask me._

_I think it suits you. Well, not as much as Nick or Nicholas does, but still. I'm still calling you Nick, though._

_Good. _He smiled a bit wider this time as Joe and Kevin released him from their bear hug, which forced him to turn his attention to them. I turned around and waved Max away, glaring at him as he ran upstairs. Then I sat at the counter to watch.

"So Alex isn't lying?" Joe asked softly.

Nick glanced at me again, shaking his head. "Um, no." He hung his head. "I don't really want to explain everything again." He sighed.

There had to be a spell for that. I reached for the book of forbidden spells that Justin had left on the counter. The boy was so careless, and it was so funny to me. Flipping through it, I was looking for one thing: time travel. If I could take them back to when Nick had told me everything, then he wouldn't have to repeat himself. In the section labeled "T" (go figure), there were at least five different spells. One of them had to be right. There was one for traveling into the future, another to the past... but I needed to let Joe and Kevin into my head as well, because most of what Nick had told me had been completely telepathic. "Here," I said aloud, pointing into the book. The boys looked over in my direction. I smiled sweetly at all of them. "Practical time travel. All we have to do is go back in time to when Nick told me."

"That was all telepathic, though," Nick pointed out. As if I didn't already know. "How are you going to make this work?"

I tried to ignore him, but his pretty, pleading eyes and intense demeanor made that hard. I used be able to shun absolutely anyone on Earth, but then I meet a boy with perfect hair and beautiful eyes and perfect everything and that just goes away? "Well... I'll need your help," I said, pointing to the book. "We need two wizards to complete the spell."

But Nick shook his head. "Alex, it's fine. We don't need to."

_What a wimp, _I began to think, but I didn't mean it at all. How could I ever mean it? Was this some side effect of that spell I'd messed up? Did it bind us closer than we'd thought? Were we really in love with each other?

_You know, I heard that, _Nick scoffed. _I am not a wimp. Joe is more of a wimp than I am. Kevin too._

_I didn't mean it. I swear._

_Well, I figured as much. You just want to try out that spell, don't you?_

_Um, yeah. I like forbidden spells. They're more fun than boring regular ones. You can't do anything really cool with those. Like time travel. I mean, haven't you ever wanted to time travel?_

_I've done enough time traveling in my lifetime. Once was enough. Besides, it's completely unnecessary._

_Oh, so you've done it before. Is that why?_

_Yesterday, actually. It's dizzying and sickening and I learned stuff that I never ever really wanted to know. Like the true identities of my brothers. I also saw them kill each other. Of course, this was the past, and the people you see now are just reincarnations of them, but... I don't want it to happen again._

"Out loud, please," Kevin said, bringing both of us out of our telepathic argument.

"Sorry," Nick and I muttered in unison, and exchanged a glance. I wasn't going to be doing my new spell today, obviously. What was it with that boy that made me cave in to him so easily? "Anyway... this is the story."

I didn't want to listen, I didn't want to hear Nick's stories of pain and the truth that lurked behind his brown eyes. I didn't want to see them turn black again, and hold the memories and emotions of a different being. I wanted him to be Nick, to be his own person. I wanted him to be all mine, I didn't want to share him with some devil-spirit. But I listened anyway, trying to look bored and not in pain while he did so. Watching Joe and Kevin's reactions was fun too, how they tried to take in everything their brother was telling them. Of course, he wasn't really their brother and it was all pretty ridiculous if you were taking it out of context, but... I enjoyed other people's pain if it wasn't Nick's.

"...and that's the end," Nick whispered, looking to his hands.

Joe and Kevin just stared.

_Well, it looks like they took it well, _I sent, being sarcastic.

_Not quite as well as you did, no. Considering that my death have an even worse effect on you than it will on them, you took it amazingly well._

_I've been told I'm going to die before. It stops coming as a surprise after a while. _After the events of our last family vacation and a whole lot of other things, it really wasn't a surprise. For a teenage rockstar... maybe it was. I mean, maybe he'd received death threats before. That wasn't a subject I was willing to bring up.

_I won't ask, because I don't think I want to know._

_Yeah, I tend to mess things up a lot. _I grinned at him. _You weren't the first mistake I made, trust me._

_Okay, now I'm curious._

I sighed. _Well, once I made a wish that our parents had never met, and... the rest of the story is kinda like Back to the Future except it took place in the present, if you know what I mean. I mean, Marty didn't exactly have wizard powers and the story line was slightly different, but... still. But then we solved everything. So it all ended well. _

_Let's hope for another fairy-tale ending. _He smiled a small, weak smile, then turned to his brothers. _They're in shock. It's been... two minutes now? For them, that's a record. Normally they'd be talking and accusing me of lying by now. _A slight pause. _Can you help me get all my stuff back home? I mean, it's not all going to fit on the motorcycle. And Stella and Macy will get suspicious if we try and stash it in Stella's car._

I wanted to laugh. _Another thing you should know about Alex Russo – she doesn't help anyone but herself. _But then I looked into his chocolate eyes and instantly regretted saying no. _You're ruining my image, Lucas, one step at a time._

_You're ruining mine, Russo. You keep on making me smile. _That statement was accompanied with a grin. Wow, he was right. But he had a beautiful smile.

_Touché. _I rolled my eyes. _We can go and come back before they fully recover, I bet. _I motioned to Joe and Kevin, who... there really were no words to quite describe it. Shock. Complete shock. _Come on, before I change my mind._

We both got up to leave, but I was pulled back down again by Joe's hand on my wrist. I hadn't noticed it there before. "What?" I said, trying to stay calm and not get annoyed. Didn't want to anger the enemy. I didn't want Nick to catch me thinking of his brothers as the enemy, however.

"Can you repeat that conversation... out loud?" Joe tried to smile. It came out more like a squiggly line plastered across his face.

"Um, no," Nick said quickly. "We're allowed to talk to ourselves if we want to."

"You weren't talking though," Kevin pointed out.

"Great observation." Nick rolled his eyes. "Listen, we'll be right back. We just need to bring some stuff back to the house that's not going to fit on the motorcycle. I promise."

"So you're not going to run away again?" Kevin asked, obviously not trusting his little brother.

"No, Kev. We'll be back in two minutes, tops." Nick punched him lightly on the shoulder and continued to tow me away like this was his house he was pulling me around, not his. As he towed me into the lair, where his stuff was still lying on the floor from the events of yesterday, he muttered to me, out loud, "Well, by their standards, they took the news pretty well."

I giggled. "And compared to me?"

"That comparison isn't quite fair, now is it?" He smiled slightly and picked up his stuff. Handing him his wand, I grabbed his wrist and pulled out my wand from inside my boot.

The teleportation spell was quick and easy, basic, now. Since I'd begun studying (secretly) with Harper, things had become a lot easier. The second floor of the firehouse was where we found ourselves. Nick dropped his stuff, which landed with a loud _crash. _

This was when it all went wrong.

"Is someone up there?" a female voice called.

Nick stiffened at my side. "Shit," he swore, "it's my mom. Hide!"

I dove into his bed, and Nick followed, grabbing a black object as he did so. He pressed a button and the drum set above our heads began to lower, covering our hideaway. "Are we going to fit?" I whispered.

_Maybe, _he replied telepathically. _I wouldn't know. I've never actually tried it before. _I heard the sound of someone coming up the stairs and moved a little closer to Nick. We were practically on top of each other now. Blushing, I remembered the ring and pushed myself away from him. He smiled a silent "thank you" as the drums squished against our bodies, jamming the mechanism. It whirred quite loudly. What a noise.

"Ow," I muttered, wanting to say it louder but couldn't. I wasn't quite sure what hurt more, the noise or the force pressing down against me.

"We're too big," Nick said in dismay. "Can you get us out of here?"

"Not undetected," I whispered back, trying not to let a squeal of pain inch into my voice. "Your parents would pick up the magical activity. We need to do a smaller spell..."

From the low light in our hiding place, I saw Nick's eyes light up. "Smaller," he breathed. "Can you make us smaller?"

"I..." What was the damn spell? "Yes." I had to squeeze my eyes shut to remember what exactly the spell was. "Shrinky dink, shrinky dank, shrinky dunk."

It was always disorienting when I did a shrinking spell, but last time it had been in the dollhouse and everything had seemed in proportion to me. Now we were small in a normal-sized environment and everything just seemed huge. "Whoa," I heard Nick say as the drums finally stopped moving. "This is..."

"Well, we're going to be stuck here for a while, so you'll have plenty of time to explore your surroundings." I tried to walk over to him, but the mattress was squishy and I kept falling down. "It is kinda odd, though."

"You're just like Joe. You keep falling down," he laughed, doing the same thing. "Danger." Laughing, we both sat down near the edge of the bed, trying to listen to what was being said out there.

We could hear footsteps, for they shook the ground slightly. "Tom," I heard Nick's mom call, "can you come here for a second?"

I squeezed the closest thing I could find – Nick's arm. He glared at me, but didn't really say anything. "What's wrong, Sandy?" his dad asked, coming over to her. They were right above our heads, almost.

"I heard something fall, so I came up here to look around," she said. "And the drum lowerer sounded broken, it was making a weird noise... and I could have sworn I just detected some..." She lowered her voice slightly. "...magical activity."

I held my breath and pressed myself against the giant pillow, squeezing Nick's arm even tighter. "Ow," he muttered. "Alex, that hurts. Your fingernails are digging into my skin. I swear, I'm going to have imprints."

"Sorry."

"Wizards?" his dad, Tom, asked.

"Yes. Two of them, I think."

"Two?"

A slight pause. "Someone was here, obviously. Do you know where Nick keeps the remote to the drum lowerer? They could be under there."

"You can't fit one person under there, let alone two," Mr. Lucas replied. "Remember when Joe tried to trap Kevin under it? It didn't work, it jammed up the mechanism. And Nick thought Frankie had broken it."

Beside me, Nick growled softly. "Oh, they are going to get it..."

"You have to remember the things these people are capable of," Mrs. Lucas reminded him. "They can do almost anything. A teleportation spell would have been a stronger one, you probably would have felt it too, but an invisibility spell, maybe. They're still here, I'm pretty sure."

"Well... there is some way we can lift up the drums, I'm sure," Mr. Lucas said. He was doing something to it, because the roof over our heads began to shake.

"Earthquake," muttered Nick. It stopped for a minute, then began for a shorter period of time.

"Aftershock," I whispered back.

Nick snorted. _We really should be talking telepathically, so they can't hear us._

_Yeah, you're probably right._

"On the count of three, lift," Mr. Lucas said. "One, two, three." Slowly, the platform that was holding the drum set and covering our hiding place began to rise.

We were absolutely doomed.

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**A/N: Muahahaha evil cliffhanger. Clicky the button or cliffhanger will hang of a cliff for longer than it should... doom. doom. doom.**

**Anyway. Review please! love, Snowy**


	9. the right to be wrong

**A/N: Yay, update! That's all I really have to say, so to make the author's note longer -- I'm giving a shoutout to my bestest buddies chibiyugixyami, silvereyed angel, and allierox106 for reviewing and being awesome! Yay!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own JONAS or WOWP or there would be a crossover episode already and Nick and Alex would fall in love... awww. (I'm strictly a Nalex fan, though. No Nelena. Because Nick is MINE. But don't get me wrong: Nelena is a million bazillion times better than Niley. -shudders- ewwwwww Miley yuck.)**

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**chapter nine: the right to be wrong**

**(n**ick**pov)**

I don't know what I'd learned from the past hour or so. Either way, it was way too much for my confused mind to take in. The fact that we were facing our death and doom didn't help at all. There was nothing we could do but hide, which wasn't too hard, because we were only about five inches tall and pretty damn tiny, but... that made us that much more vulnerable. Like a bug. How much effort did it take to kill a bug? Unless you were Kevin, who would start crying if he was told he had to kill anything (well, apparently except for wizards), it took virtually none. And we could only use magic as a last resort. Suddenly, I did know what I had learned – a new way to spell our own annihilation.

Behind my pillow was where we chose to hide, for lack of a better place to get to in the five seconds we had. It was kinda dark, but it wasn't like it mattered, it was a hiding spot. A hiding spot with a surprising amount of obstacles, like guitar picks and a pair of drumsticks and lots of other junk. There was lots of sheet music around too. This was where I'd hidden all the other songs I'd written for Alex earlier. Great. These were the really sappy, stupid ones. Luckily for me, she was in too much of a panic to really look at her surroundings. For me, it was hard not to. Being five inches tall was a new experience for me. Hell, having magical powers was a new experience for me. I'd always been the normal one.

"What are we going to do?" she practically demanded.

_Talk this way? _I tried to smile. I'm pretty sure I failed. I mean, I'd never really been "good" at smiling in the first place. Even the happiest moment couldn't crack a smile, but Alex could. Except when we could both die. _Everything will be fine. I, um, think._

_Sure it will. You're their son._

_Um, not really. I thought we went over this. I'm adopted. That was one of the first questions you asked me when we met. Of course, since I'm not really their son, why should they care about me?_

_That's not the point, Nick. The point is that they have raised you since you were two days old. They raised you as their own child, and as Joe, Kevin, and Frankie's brother. They raised you as a Lucas, and you are a Lucas. Everyone plays favorites to their children, whether adopted or not. They could care less about me, but they won't hurt you._

_If they truly cared about me, they wouldn't hurt you._

_Do they know that? Do they know that you're that attached to me?_

I ignored the question. _Can we worry more about escaping? I mean, arguing about whether I'm truly a member of this family can wait. Maybe we should do it with Joe and Kevin. You three might be able to convince me that I _am _a part of this family. That I'm actually a part of any family. _Really, was I a part of a family? I stood alone, alone in this field of pain. The feeling of being controlled still haunted me. It had taken everything I had to overcome the spirit, to earn back control, but I knew he wasn't happy at all. He hadn't spoken to me in a while; I knew he wasn't paying attention to what was happening right now. If he was... I didn't want to think about that.

"Tom, get something from the room," I heard my mom say. Instinctively, I moved closer to Alex until she was shaking in my arms, and I was shaking too. We were scared, afraid of death and everything else that was in store. "And call the boys. I'm sure they'd like to be here."

"No," I whispered aloud. Not Joe and Kevin. Would they act the way they had yesterday, would they treat me like the enemy, or would they treat me for who I am, their brother, their friend, their bandmate? If they committed murder, if any of them did, if I ended up dying, it would be all over the news. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to imagine. Of course, they could probably simulate a suicidal jump. The pressures of fame get to everyone's head, it wouldn't be hard to convince the world that I was insane enough to jump. All you would have to do is make sure the doctors who do the autopsy don't suspect a thing. They have healing methods, they could heal my wounds then create new ones.

Or could it be a car accident? All too common – two teenagers, broken and killed in an accident. Broken bones, head trauma, internal bleeding... the list of injuries was endless. Teen musician Nick Lucas was killed in a hit and run car accident, along with who could have been his girlfriend, identified as Alex Russo. Even if Alex was failing school, they'd automatically make her a straight-A student – every teenager who died in an accident like this one automatically became a stellar student. There would be a big funeral – probably not the size of Michael Jackson's, but comparable.

Of course, if I died, then they wouldn't have to worry about me coming and killing them all, either. Not me, but the spirit in my body. I would be the one accused, convicted of murder, spending my life in jail. Would it make a difference? When I'm stuck in the back of my head, forced to only watch someone else's actions, it's as bad as jail. Maybe even worse. I wouldn't know. I've never been in jail.

_**Interesting thoughts, Kione.**_

I gritted my teeth. _I thought I told you to stop calling me that._

_**I did name you, I did create you. I have to right to call you whatever I wish.**_

_Does this mean I can call you whatever I want? If so, I've got names, believe me. _I tried to think of the worst names I knew. None of them seemed bad enough.

_**You can call me Samael. That is what I am known as where I come from.**_

_Which is hell, right?_

_**I would stop talking if I were you. I have not thought of your punishment for what happened earlier yet, but you do not want it to increase. You are strong and stubborn, and you do not give up. I have possessed other bodies, and I have never met a spirit quite like yours. No one has ever overcome me before. I am too weak to try another possession, but I can assure you later that you will witness your punishment firsthand. Now, I must go meet with the Elders. You will be a good boy while I am gone? Stay out of trouble?**_

I wanted to laugh. I already was in trouble, way over my head in trouble. _Of course, Mr. Samael, _I said, trying to sound obedient, but it came out more sarcastically than anything else. _Now get the hell out of my head._

**_As you wish. Enjoy yourself, Kione. You might not have this physical shell much longer. _**I felt him leave my head, and opened my eyes.

Alex was staring at me with wide eyes. "Nick, you okay?" she whispered.

"Yeah. I'm fine. I guess." I ran my fingers through my hair. "Just, um, having an interesting talk with my visitor evil spirit friend Samael. That's his name, apparently. Oh, and I'm contemplating my own death. Always a wonderful subject." I made a face. "He says he's going to punish me for my actions. Meaning regaining control over my own body."

"So he didn't give you back control?" she breathed. "You took it from him?"

"Yeah. He says I'm strong. Stubborn. He hates me. His own little creation. I suppose he was hoping I would end up being a mindless slave to him, but I guess he got unlucky this time around."

She was silent for a second. "Just don't fall victim to him, Nick. I'd miss you too much." Then she managed to smile weakly. "I do love you, you know. I've known you for two days and I love you."

"Technically, you've known me for a while, I mean, JONAS is everywhere-"

"No." She cut me off. "I love you for who you are as a person, not as a celebrity. I love you for you, Nick, not for your looks or for your fame. For who you are."

"Who I am." The words made me think of a million song ideas; they tasted so good in my mouth. Too bad I wasn't big enough to play a guitar. "God, how come whenever I think of good song ideas, I can't get them down on paper?"

She shrugged. "Whatever it'll end up as, it'll be beautiful. I know it." And before I knew it, she leaned over and pressed her warm lips up against mine. I felt every muscle in my body go limp, yet become stronger as I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her closer. Love was such an odd emotion. I could barely understand it, but it was wonderful and beautiful and I never wanted it to end.

And then it did end – with four words.

"I can hear you." My mom's voice was cold and angry. "Show yourselves."

_Shit. _Alex pulled away quickly, landing on a guitar pick. _How could we be so freaking stupid? _I knew she was holding back worse language. She intercepted my look and added, _I could never use that word against you. Especially when you look at me with those pretty eyes..._

_Um, thanks? Apparently my eyes are pretty?_

She looked away and didn't reply. In the dim light, I saw that she was blushing.

"We know you're here," my dad said. "We can come looking for you."

I had an idea. _Alex. Get inside the pillowcase._

_Inside it? Why?_

_They won't look inside it. They'll just toss it aside. When they're not looking, we can sneak out a window or something._

_And plummet to our death? Um, no thank you. I'd rather die fighting._

_Then fight gravity. Besides, if we're outside they might not be able to trace a spell. We could teleport outside, or fly somehow... I wouldn't know._

Doubtfully, she ducked inside, and I followed her deep into the other end of my pillow. _So. Any more brilliant ideas, rockstar? _There was a hint of sarcasm in her voice, but she was smiling. _Yeah, sorry, but I'm just not sure it's going to work._

_Well, I do have a right to be wrong._

_Nick Lucas? Be wrong?_

_Yeah, surprising, I know. _I rolled my eyes. _So, what's your idea?_

_I don't have one. Normally Justin's here to save me when I make a mistake._

_Well, this time it's my fault. You can always tell him that._

We left it at that, and began to wait things out. "We'll wait until Joe and Kevin get here," I heard my dad whisper. "It should be impossible for them to escape. I made a few adjustments to the security system." I didn't want to know what the adjustments were. I knew the danger of a lot of them.

_Oh, great, _Alex thought in dismay. _So we really are stuck._

_I might be able to sway Joe and Kevin. Might being a key word there._

_Why does danger always seem to get in the way of our little moments? _she asked. _I mean, when you played the song for me, the spirit, Samael, started to control you, and then there was the time you thought you could take on Joe and Kevin all by yourself, not to mention the... the kiss. _She paused for a second. _I did like the kiss, though. I liked it a lot._

_I did too. _I sighed and pulled her close to me. _We'll be fine. I promise you._

After forty-five minutes, the thunder of footsteps got louder. Joe and Kevin were home, and the hunt had begun. It was probably pretty obvious to them that we were the ones trapped somewhere in the house (although I was hoping they'd try and convince our parents that we'd escaped), but it wasn't their thoughts I could read. Alex's were all panicky and not at all parallel with her tough-girl attitude. If I got her to act out of character, she was probably having the same effect on me.

I felt the ground vibrate even more as someone climbed into my bed and started looking around. I heard the crashes of some stuff and guessed that it was one of my brothers, probably Kevin. Then the pillow was picked up, and Alex squeaked loudly. I glared at her as we practically froze in mid-air, the angle the pillow was tilted making me fall onto Alex. Slowly, the pillowcase pulled apart from the pillow to reveal Kevin's huge hand and part of his face. "Nick?" he whispered incredulously.

"Kevin." Alex spoke first, and launched herself at my brother's thumb. Kevin looked absolutely stunned.

"Kev, you have to help us," I said. "Can you please, please, please get us out of here? Just take us outside. Please."

He sighed and set down the pillow, hiding everything but his hand, which Alex was still hugging, from view. Then he pried her off his thumb, pulling that away too. And after a moment's deliberation, picked us both up again, holding our tiny bodies in his giant, cupped hands. "You know, technically I'm supposed to kill you," he muttered, "but since you're my brother..."

"Who are you talking to?" I heard my dad ask.

Kevin nearly dropped us in panic. "Um, I found a bug and I'm bringing it outside," he lied quickly, then began to mutter random things about bugs under his breath. It was the perfect excuse, Kevin would do this anyway, whether my life was on the line or not.

Meanwhile, I was pressed against Alex in a very uncomfortable position, not to mention very, very close together. _I hate being manhandled, _Alex thought to me. All I did was groan (softly) in agreement. And I was wondering if I'd ever been so close (physically) to anyone in my entire life.

I eventually decided that I hadn't.

Finally, Kevin set us down on the ground about ten yards from the house in the garage. "Do your thing," he whispered, sitting down next to the car.

Alex pulled out her wand and muttered something I couldn't quite make out, and we began to grow again. In a blink of an eye, we were both normal-sized again. And thank god for that, too. The more time I spent as a living, male equivalent of a Polly Pocket doll, the more time I began to appreciate the simple things in life – like being the tallest. "Thanks, Kevin," I said.

"You're welcome," he muttered, and disappeared back into the house. I wanted to roll my eyes – he was just showing off, after all – but it didn't matter, there was no point if he wasn't going to see it.

"Do you want to come inside?" I offered. "I mean, of course this time you won't run the risk of being attacked. They won't hurt you, not if you're with me. They'll be too busy looking for their 'invaders' to pay attention to little old 'mortal' Nicholas, whether he brings home a girl or not."

But Alex shook her head. "I should probably get back home before my parents start freaking out. I need tickets to..." She trailed off. "My favorite band is going on tour this summer, and I really want tickets..." She sighed. I knew exactly what the band was, but I wasn't going to ask, just to make sure. But I knew I could easily get tickets to a JONAS concert. "Bye, Nick," she said, and disappeared just like Kevin.

Just to prove to myself that I could travel places without teleporting, I walked to the front door and opened it. "I'm home," I announced to no one in particular, and then walked upstairs to where everyone was still looking for the "invaders".

"Oh, hi Nick," Joe said without looking up from where he was crawling around on my bed.

I exchanged a look with a guilty looking Kevin. "Get out of my bed," I snapped, putting my acting skills to use. I tried to kick my brother in the shoulder but failed and fell over on top of him instead.

"If you get off of me," he muttered back as I rolled off of him and onto my bed.

"What are you even doing here, anyway?" I asked, trying to act naïve. "How many times have I told you to get your hands off all my stuff?" I glared at him and pulled over the guitar that was lying near by.

"Nick, honey," my mom said, coming over to my area. "Um, now might not be the best time. There are two wizards hiding in our house. They were fooling around with the drum lowerer. They could be in your bed, for all we know. They're probably teenagers, so..."

I scowled. "Great for them." As she walked away, I added, just to try and keep my cover, "Why did I get stuck in a family full of wizard hunters?"

Joe sighed and came back over to whisper something in my ear. "I've never given you credit for this, but you're a great actor."

I smiled back and started to play my guitar, happy to be safe and considered completely innocent.

**(no pov)**

A darkness fell upon the town earlier than normal. No one thought much of it, but one girl knew what it meant. Late at night, she pulled on her combat boots and a pair of jeans and set out for the meeting place in front of the school. In front of the building waited an old man, with a long white beard and rounded glasses. He was wearing long, navy-colored robes and was holding a wand. He looked a lot like Dumbledore, from Harry Potter, if anything else. "Aella," he whispered. She knew the name, that was one of her names. "I am so glad to see you."

"I am too, Master Volute," she replied.

He smiled at her. "I do hope you have been watching the Lucas boy? Nicholas is his name, no?"

"Yes. Nick." She smiled at the memory of the curly-haired boy. Sometimes she got so into character, it was easy to forget who she truly was. "Samael was successfully able to manipulate him. We must work fast if we wish to save him. But Nick is rebellious when needed to be, and is able to overcome him – he did once."

"Hmm. The boy is strong." He sighed. "And he has met Alexandra?"

"Yes. It gets interesting there. It seems that they are... closer than we had expected. But it will not interfere, most likely. At least not in the future that I can see right now." She sighed. "Is there any other outcome possible?"

The old man shrugged. "It is up to the two of them. They will decide their own fate. It is a shame, for I do not wish to see them meet the ending that you see in your visions, Aella. Alexandra is a very prosperous young wizard, and Nicholas, even starting late, shows a great future. He may have disadvantages, but I trust that Alexandra is teaching him well." He smiled.

"Very well." Aella's tone was crisp and blunt.

"Do not get too attached to those boys. Two of them are your enemy, and one of them will die. We can barely afford to lose them, and we definitely cannot afford to lose you."

"Yes, Master." The girl made the sign of respect with her fingers, the one that looked similar to the Vulcan one used on Star Trek. "May the stars watch over you."

"And you, Aella." With that, they both disappeared into the midnight sky.

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**A/N: So, let's review. In the last chapter, Nick and Alex kissed (finally!) and they managed to escape the grasp of Nick's legal guardians (as I shall start calling them) with Kevin's help. Oh, and there's some weird chick named Aella and she's made a prophecy about Nick and Alex's death. She's important. Remember her...**

**And also, REVIEW please! I highly appreciate it! Yup, so bye! **

**~ Snowy**


	10. domino effect

**A/N: It's a very short chapter. This is all I'm going to say: chibiyu, I warned you -- it's an absolutely horrible cliffy.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own JONAS or WOWP.**

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**chapter ten: domino effect**

**(aella pov)**

I didn't see the point in telling them. Nick was under enough stress as it was, and Joe was avoiding his little brother like the plague, obviously mistrusting him. Kevin was just the opposite; he stuck to Nick like glue, like he was ready to protect his younger brother from any threat at a moment's notice. Of course, Nick was perfectly capable, if not even more capable, of protecting himself. He had his wand close to him at all times, sometimes not properly hidden, and during class I would watch him touch it lightly, as if in the next second he would need to use it. I didn't need to give any of them something else to think about.

But the whole concept of it – that Nick was inevitably going to die – was shocking to my brain. Somehow, as I got closer to the boys, it became harder for my brain to concept that they weren't really brothers, that they were supposed to be mortal enemies. And since Joe had begun to treat Nick like that, it kind of hurt. I'd seen magic tear families apart before, but never quite like this. Oh, and did I mention I was falling in love with one of them? I hated when the future changed, and how I lost control over my own power, but that's what I was doing. I was twisting fate. I was falling, falling, falling, and there was no one to catch me. No one at all.

So what was I doing still here, when I could let my feelings for the enemy get in the way of everything? I was here to protect Nick, not his brother. For all intensive purposes, they were the enemy, but here I was, playing the part of neutral Switzerland, an innocent human blind to the power of destruction that they possessed.

And then there was Stella. If only she knew what kind of clique she had gotten herself into when she met these boys fifteen years ago. Between Joe and Kevin, or Adrian and Corbett, the most powerful of the Angels to walk the earth, and their younger "brother" Nick, or Kione, the wizard living amongst his enemies, not to mention the fact that he was at least partially possessed by an evil spirit out to destroy both sides, she was in pretty much over her head for an innocent, powerless human. She'd fallen victim to the disguise, the normal American teens, the band, the everything. It wasn't quite fake, but it wasn't quite real anymore, was it?

Of course, there was me as well. My name, the name Aella, was one from fairy tales and stories, the prophetess who knew the future. What people didn't realize was that the future was subject to change, and if you knew what had to be changed... then it could be done if you knew just how to go about doing it. And that's why everyone else knew me as Macy Misa, the JONAS fan club president and sports extraordinaire. I was at high school again to, quite simply, change the future. To ensure that Nick Lucas would live.

But the future I saw right now had him dying, and yet, I was scared to change it. I didn't know how to in the first place, and now I didn't want to because if I changed it, it could have a domino effect. Joe could die, Stella could die, Justin could die, Max could die. Alex could die, and then changing the future would be pointless – Nick would die with her.

And last, but not least, Kevin could die. And I couldn't let Kevin die, not now. Not after I was ready to fall into his heart. Not in all my four hundred years on this planet had I fallen in love. And now I had fallen in love with the enemy. Maybe it wasn't only Nick walking the enemy lines – could it be me too?

I leaned against my locker and sighed. Life was so hard already, why did I have to bottle up all my emotions and never let anyone see them?

"Macy!" Stella screamed, practically running over me. "Have you seen Nick today?"

"Nick? Why?" I immediately snapped to attention. "Did something happen? Is he hurt? What?"

"His eyes are _black,_" she replied, stressing the last word. "I mean, it totally doesn't work with the outfit. I coordinated it so it would match his eyes..."

I zoned out after that, thinking about the eyes, black eyes... "Oh, shit," I muttered, and raced off, leaving Stella there alone. Samael was back, and if he was leaving Nick trapped... if there was any way to blow my cover, it would be this way. Nick was strong, could he do it himself? I didn't wait around to find out.

He was in the atrium, pacing back and forth. Joe was nowhere to be seen, but I found Kevin, shaking with some look of pain on his face. "Kev, what's up?" I asked, trying not to let my hormones get in the way of my mission.

"Nick," he breathed. "He..." He couldn't finish, he just broke down crying and embraced me in a hug. I tried not to melt; I needed to get to Nick as soon as possible. If I could alter this moment just a little bit, it could change everything, either for the better of for the worse. "He's... his eyes."

"Kev, I know, Stella told me," I said as calmly as I could, trying divert all the stares away from us, because people were indeed staring. "Look, I'll go talk to him."

"Mace, that's not a good idea," he breathed, but I managed to squirm my way out of his grip and throw the door open to the atrium. As soon as the door had slammed behind me, and I was looking into Nick's pitch-black eyes, I took a breath.

"What did you do with Nick?"

**(nickpov)**

Leave it to the spirit to simply ruin my day.

I refused to call him by his name, Samuel or Samael or whatever it was. Evil things shouldn't have names, and they shouldn't name other people, whether they might have created them or not. I was Nicholas, not Kione, and I hated being called that name as much as I hated being called Joe or Kevin by forgetful relatives. But, I mean, he promised revenge. If watching him go to school for me was revenge... then I guess I could take it in stride. There were worse punishments. Maybe he could do my homework for me too?

Well, let's just say that I didn't get so lucky. He showed no intent of even going to all my classes, but instead stayed in the atrium for all of homeroom. I felt powerless, trapped, stuck. And I was powerless to do anything even as simply as get to class. Or warn Macy when she came barging into the room as if I didn't already look like I wanted to be left alone. "What did you do with Nick?"

Wait. Macy knew? She knew that my brothers were Adrian and Corbett, that I was a wizard, that I was being possessed, everything else? She knew at least a little about what was going on? "I'm fine, Macy," the spirit said in my own voice, acting and trying to pass it off like it was actually me speaking. "Just having a bad day, that's all."

"Oh, that's all bullshit, and you know it," she snapped, and he took a couple steps back. "Yeah, I know who you really are, Samael, and I know that you're not really Nick. What did you do with him?" She grabbed my shirt and pulled my body closer to hers. I felt so useless. So freaking useless.

"Who are you?" the spirit demanded, giving my voice an edge. "What gives you the right to question me?"

Macy took a breath, her shoulders heaving. "I am Macy Misa, otherwise known as Aella, prophetess of the stars. I have been assigned to this mission, this body, to live this life to change the future, to watch over the boy known as Nicholas Jerry Lucas. To ensure that he will live."

"He cannot live," he hissed. "It is essential that not just him, but everyone, including you, dies. The magic is a threat to human race, the mortals, the innocents that surround us." I felt my face twist into a sly smile. "So, you can see the future?" The girl I knew as Macy nodded slowly. "And my little minion is going to die?" This time, Macy didn't say or do anything. I interpreted as a yes. That I was going to die.

If one of your closest friends knew that you were going to die, wouldn't you want them to, I don't know, tell you? "Give me an answer," the spirit said, forcing Macy back a couple of steps. "Tell me now."

But Macy still didn't say anything. "What a mistake, Miss Aella," he said, and pulled out my wand. My beloved wand. My only tool of protection. And he was going to abuse it. Was he really going to expose me like that? However, Macy was quicker, even without a wand. She knocked my body to the ground easily, pinning me against the cold concrete sidewalk. Her hand was made into a fist, as if she was going to punch me, but she didn't, not at first. "I'm so sorry, Nick," she whispered, and then punched me/Samael in the eye.

I may have been completely out of control, but it still hurt like crazy, and my vision went fuzzy in my left eye. The spirit muttered something that sounded a bit like swearing in Latin, and a bolt of yellow light flew out of my wand, sending Macy into the glass, which shattered upon impact, glass shards flying. A couple (okay, a lot) embedded themselves into my flesh. It hurt. Was there anything I could do about it? No. As the spirit picked my body up off of the ground, I plead silently, _Please don't hurt her!_

_**You have served your purpose, young Kione. Your pleas and wishes mean nothing to me. **_He walked swiftly over to where Macy was getting to her feet in the middle of the hallway, shaking. The halls were empty; class had started, but it wouldn't be long before people were out here, trying to make sense out of what had happened. Before Samael could say another spell, Macy had knocked my body back through the windowpane to the other side of the atrium, five, ten, fifteen feet in the air. I fell to the ground with an acceleration of 9.8 meters per second square (thank you, physics class) and heard the bones in my left leg shatter upon impact with the ground. Macy came running over and without hesitation, kicked me, pretty hard, in the head. The whole world suddenly became very, very dizzying.

_You see, this is what you get for taking on the sportiest girl in school, _I thought to Samael, but he had completely left my head. Like any bully, he'd given up, leaving me to feel my pain. And I felt it even more, now that I could control my broken legs and my throbbing head. I struggled to keep my eyes open.

Macy stared at me for a second, then whispered one word: "Brown." Then she knelt down next to my broken body. She wasn't looking so great herself, the one spell that Samael had been able to cast had left her burned and bruised, not to mention all the blood from the shattered glass that now decorated the hallway. "Nick?" she asked, her blurry face coming into view. "Nick, I'm sorry..." I didn't know how she knew it was me again, and I didn't have the strength to ask. It probably had something to do with brown. Brown what? Dried blood? Dirt?

"I know," I managed to rasp. "Mace, I..."

"Don't speak," she shushed. "The teachers are almost here. They'll help. We'll say that something fell from the ceiling in the atrium and cracked the glass somehow. It'll be okay, Nick."

New voices now, concerned students, the footsteps of teachers... "What is going on here?" Ms. Snark demanded, and then the world went completely dark.

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**A/N: Is it possible to have a worse cliffhanger? Blame chibiyugixyami for that. :) Review... or maybe I leave it hanging.**

**~ Snowy**


	11. tidal wave

**A/N: I'm baaaaccck! Yes, I'm alive. For all who read my dreaded author's note chapter, sorry 'bout that, I really hate those, but I felt it was sort of necessary. Now everything's normal, and I'm going to post this before I go to my friend's house! Yay, new chapters! For those who have been missing Justin, he's in this one. :) And it's more of a bridge chapter, because I need to get to the end scene which is coming up......... yup. Anyway. Here we go. I won't bore you with all these details of what exactly I've been doing...**

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Duh...**

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**chapter eleven: tidal wave**

**(nickpov)**

Darkness. It was cold, yet warm; welcoming, yet it turned me away. I embraced the darkness, the blackness, the empty void of space I could call my home. It wasn't a threat, but more of an inspiration. Falling into the black, empty, nothingness... it was sweet and silent, and I liked it. No pain. No feeling. Only nothing.

Falling, falling, falling.

Landing?

The so-called landing into consciousness came hard, and suddenly, I felt the pain again, letting out a squeal. Immediately, someone was by my side, hand in mine. It was warm, it was nice, it was Macy's. "Nick, I'm here, don't worry," she whispered, just over the sound of squealing sirens.

"Alex," I managed to get out of my mouth. If I was hurt, if I was feeling this much pain, she was too.

Macy was silent for a second. "I'm sure she'll be fine," she said. "If there's one thing I can promise you now, it's that you'll live through this part, at least." I didn't argue with my prophetic friend. There was absolutely no point. She was always going to be right. Couldn't I have some normal friends, for once? Was that really too much to ask, to lead a normal life?

I didn't need someone to answer that question; I knew the answer myself. I was the boy trainee wizard who had been raised among the Angels; I was a teenage heartthrob and member of one of the world's most popular bands, and I shared my mind with two other people, one of them a mythical spirit of evil, the other a teenage girl on the edge of dropping out of high school. So, no, a normal life was completely out of the question.

I choked helplessly on the air, trying to find strength to breathe, but I felt so weak, so weak I had trouble breathing. Someone affixed some sort of plastic thing to my face, and I felt oxygen flood my lungs, but there was fire and pain and it hurt.... I couldn't even speak, now, the mask made that impossible. I had so many things to tell Macy, so many questions to ask...

Suddenly, the breaks were thrown and my bed rocked a little. I hadn't realized we were on an ambulance until now. I watched through blurry eyes as a couple of paramedics took off the oxygen mask loaded me off of the vehicle, Macy leaping out behind them. There was no one left in the back of the ambulance. Not even my brothers. I tried to focus on breathing instead of them, taking long, steady breaths. Breathing was rhythm, rhythm was music, music came so easy to me... it was like quarter notes. One, two, three, four; one, two, three, four. I was a drummer, I knew the importance of rhythm, and if it was going to keep me alive and my mind off of those who weren't with me, then I would focus on that. The music of my heartbeat, of my breaths, of my life.

One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Steady. Beating on. It might not meet its death now, but it would later.

Because Macy was always right, and if I wasn't going to die now... she still saw me dying in the future, and I would do anything to change that. Absolutely anything to continue living this life. And absolutely anything to keep Alex alive.

**(justinpov)**

I've always regarded being called out of class to be a good thing. Normally because I would be accepting some sort of award or something, and I needed to get my picture taken for the yearbook. Unfortunately, that wasn't quite the case this time. As soon as I stepped off the stairwell and into a sea of pandemonium and paramedics, I knew that there was something really, horribly wrong.

Mr. McCarthy, the gym teacher, accosted me as soon as I took a step away from the stairs. "Justin!" he called. The only reason he probably knew my name because I spent so much time hiding from him. "Justin, it's Alex. She's hurt, and we have no clue what's wrong. There's been no injuries."

No injuries? Not even a concussion or something you couldn't see? That wasn't possible, except if it was caused by a spell... something clicked in my mind. It was a spell, a bonding spell, which meant that boy Nick must be hurt as well. "Where is she?" I asked as Max came to my side. I looked at him briefly to acknowledge his presence, and noticed that he looked mesmerized by all the medical technicians and paramedics. I kicked him once in warning.

All the gym teacher had to do was point. Max's smile was immediately wiped away when he saw our sister on the stretcher, unconscious, almost like she was asleep. You could easily assume that if she didn't have such a look of pain and agony on her face. I tried to keep from calling out and crying. They wouldn't be able to fix this at a normal hospital, we'd need to take her to the wizard world to get it truly sorted out. "Alex," Max whispered softly, and I had to tow him after the paramedics and into the ambulance, no matter how cool he might have once found it.

The ride was a blur, all I could remember was the sirens of the truck and the beeping of Alex's temporary heart monitor. It was steady, but her breaths were irregular, like she was having trouble breathing. I resisted the urge to give my baby sister CPR. They didn't need my help, they were trained. So when the ride ended, all I did was follow them inside into the hospital room like a zombie. Except maybe a bit faster and not undead.

As we walked behind them, I heard a receptionist mutter to a doctor, "We're taking a transfer from New Jersey Regional. Some boy was in an accident at school, broke his left leg and left arm, along with two ribs. Not to mention a concussion and a whole lot of bleeding. He was cut on some glass. The ceiling collapsed, apparently, and broke a window."

My gaze flickered to Alex's quickly disappearing stretcher, wondering where the pain was. Could that be Nick they were talking about? The thing that scared me was that it sounded like a cover story. That it was fake, a cover-up for anything magical. Without thinking, I ran over to the pay phone, where a phone book was sitting underneath it. I was looking for Lucas, right? Tom and Sandy. But why would I want to call them, even if they were in there in the first place? They were the enemy, the wizard hunters, the Angels, the people I didn't want to see. They didn't even know that their son was a wizard. Besides, what would they be doing in the phone book? They'd be getting endless phone calls from fangirls if they were in there.

Standing there, in the middle of the emergency room, I felt completely useless to do anything to help the situation. The whole thing was completely out of control, beyond my knowledge of magic or relationships. Nick and Alex were connected on some higher level that I just simply couldn't understand, and I knew I never would.

The door to the hospital swung open again, and in ran my parents, right through the doors and into the ICU. Behind them was Juliet. I stood up to greet her, but she skittered right over and pushed me right down again. "Justin, what happened?"

"Alex." That was all I was able to get out without starting to cry again. And no self-respecting guy cried, especially not over his little annoying life-wrecking sister.

"I know that," she whispered. "What happened to her?"

This was where it got complicated. Alex had told me very specifically not to tell anyone about the whole ordeal with Nick. But this was Juliet. Alex was friends with her, she trusted her, I was sure. And I trusted her, more than I trusted both of my siblings. But this was Alex's secret... that I was about to betray to the vampire I was hopelessly in love with.

"Alex... made a mistake with a spell," I whispered. "She managed to bond herself to some guy she barely knew and had rescued from the wizard hunters. Now I think he's hurt, and because he's hurt, she's feeling his pain."

"Who is he?"

I sighed. "You know that band JONAS, right?" Juliet nodded very slowly. "Nick. Nick Lucas, from JONAS. Of course, it doesn't help that she had a crush on him before, and now..." I paused again. "I think the spell makes them fall in love with each other. I didn't tell them this, because if they knew that their relationship was purely based on magic... well, would you want that?"

"No," Juliet said, "but it's not."

I looked at my girlfriend quizzically. "What do you mean?"

"Their relationship is based on love, Justin, like ours is, and most everyone else's in the world. If they had so chosen, they could have absolutely hated each other, and yet still have their minds to share. Nick truly loves her, and Alex loves him, and if it's meant to last an eternity, it will." Juliet squeezed my hand as she said this. "Justin, I feel the same way about you. This feels like it'll last, and I've never felt this way about anyone, and I've been alive for a very long time. Love itself is a magical thing, and the true emotion cannot be created by using other magic. Sure, you can simulate the feelings of love, but it never lasts." She put her arm around me. "I love you, Justin."

"I love you too," I said softly.

I remember falling asleep with her in my arms.

**(alexpov)**

I awoke with a start, my eyelids fluttering open as if they were forced. The light in my face was blinding to my tired eyes, which adjusted to my surroundings quickly as I began to take in what exactly was around me.

I was in a room, a hospital room; a room painted with a creamy white color and matching floral curtains. Bland and boring. I might enjoy hospitals just a tiny bit more if their walls were at least a bit more exciting to stare at. As I lay there, staring at a crack in the ceiling, I found myself humming "The Saltwater Room", the song Nick had played me. It was a cover of a song, sure, but it was more beautiful when he sang it.

"So tell me darling, do you wish we'd fall in love?" I sang softly, hearing my voice echo off the ugly walls. "Yeah, all the time, all the time; time together isn't ever quite enough..."

"When you and I are alone, I've never felt so at home," a new voice whispered from the doorway, and in limped Nick on a pair of crutches, his left leg encased in plaster, and his arms wrapped in bandage cloth. For a second, my brain had to wonder why he was allowed up and out of bed, but then I realized that he had actual physical injuries to go along with his actual physical pain. I had pain and loneliness, and nothing else. Well, now I had Nick, who was now by my side and holding my hand. It felt warm in my own cold one. And it felt good.

"Feeling better?" he asked softly, sitting down in the plastic chair next to my bed and resting his crutches against the wall. I nodded. "I'm sorry. This is all my fault."

"It's not!" I tried to insist. "I did the damn spell that got us into this whole bonded-lovesick-eternity thing. If I hadn't, you could have gotten hurt and I never would have known! It's my fault, Nick. Don't blame yourself."

He sighed and closed his eyes for a second, letting go of my hand. "Alex... you barely even know what happened." He was right. I had absolutely no clue about how he got hurt. I motioned for him to continue. "Remember Macy?" he asked. I nodded. "Turns out she's some sort of prophetess working for the wizards. I think. Anyway, there was Samael, and he used me to try and kill her, but she came pretty close to killing me instead... which doesn't really matter, because apparently, according to her, I'm just going to die anyway. And Alex, I don't want you to die because of something you didn't mean to do or even be involved in. To keep the original prophecy from coming true, I'm going to have to kill myself. You don't need to die with me."

"I have no choice."

"I know. That's the whole problem." His chocolate eyes had an almost insane quality in them, but they weren't black and they weren't Samael's. I guess that was what mattered, was that he was himself. "Alex... if you truly loved someone, would you die for them, in their place?"

Did I have to think? "Yes," I said. "For true love, I would die. What are you talking about, though? We're both going to-"

"I'm talking about my brothers," he whispered. "There's a prophecy, an ancient Dark Angel prophecy, that says that I'm going to have to kill them. And even if they are my enemy, I don't think I'll ever be able to do that without completely killing my sanity as well."

"What sanity?" I teased, trying to make the moment a little lighter. All that earned for me was a glare. "Sorry."

"It's fine," he muttered, a bit distracted. "I can see even you don't understand." He looked away from me and pretended to be fascinated with the ring on his finger, completely avoiding my gaze.

"If you don't want to be here, Nick, then why don't you just leave?" I snapped, impatient. "If 'even I don't understand,' then why are you still here? You can just go and do whatever you want. I don't freaking care anymore." I don't know where the anger came from, but the old Alex Russo was back.

"Fine then. Maybe I will." He stood up and grabbed his crutches. "Maybe I don't care if you die." And with that, he left the room. And I felt like crying.

Hours passed. The tears wouldn't stop coming, and I found it hard to lie in bed if I knew that there was a possibility of me dying. It was late at night that I learned what Nick didn't want me to know.

"The Lucas boy," a doctor was whispering. "The one who was discharged this morning? Turns out his family never came. They were never even here, even though they were contacted when the accident happened, and when he was transferred. He left by himself. I wonder if he has anywhere to go."

I started to cry again, and soon everyone was in the room, nurses, doctors, my family, Juliet. Everyone holding my hand, saying my name, trying to calm me down. But I was in hysterics. I'd made him go, I'd let him go even when he had no one. Had I been the last one he'd had?

_Nick, _I called, even my thoughts sounding weak and helpless. _Nick, I'm sorry... I didn't know, I was mad... I didn't mean it. I love you, Nick. I really do...._

"Alex, sweetheart," my dad was saying. My daddy. He'd always love me, but never like him... "Alex, calm down, everything's okay."

"No!" I shrieked, and in all my insanity, the word must have been considered useless.

"We're going to give her a sedative to calm her down," a doctor announced, the same one who had been talking about Nick in the hallway. I felt a needle go into my arm, but I still thrashed about uselessly, still contained in my bed. Useless, so useless...

_Nick... nick... nick... _The sedative began to take effect, and I felt myself begin to become weak and limp. _nick i need you i miss you i love you i'm sorry_

As the world faded away, I managed to hold on by a thread. I heard him... _Alex, calm down. I know you didn't mean it. Calm..._

_nick..._

_I'm here, Alex. Don't worry. _Everything slipped away, and now all I had was his voice, and he was singing to me...

_i wish i had covered all my tracks  
completely, because i'm so afraid  
is that the light at the far end of the tunnel  
or just the train?_

_there's a bright light up ahead  
and help is on the way, help is on the way_

_depression please cut to the chase  
and cut a long story short  
oh please be done, how much longer  
can this drama afford to run?_

_it hurts just to wake up  
whenever you're wearing thin  
alone on the outside  
so tired of looking in_

_the end is uncertain  
and i've never been so afraid  
but i don't need a telescope  
to see that there's hope  
and that makes me feel brave._

_

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**A/N: Whoever guesses the song that Nick's singing gets cake! (The cake is a lie.....) Haha, no, I've been playing too much Portal... And maybe someone might want to explain the chapter title? If you do both (and it shouldn't be too hard to do...), you get cake AND ice cream.**

**Snowfallxo is not responsible for any sugar rushes that may result as an effect of this prize. If you lose at foosball to yourself and make a psychotic confession to your younger curly-haired adorably sweet brother (um, you should know WHO exactly I'm referring to here), IT IS NOT MY FAULT.**

**(Hey, did anyone notice that I took the dot out of my name? Yeah, the site thinks it's a link and removes it. So byebye dot! Haha, um, yeah. Bye.)**


	12. safety pin swords

**A/N: This chapter didn't want to be written. But I needed to get Stella in there because she's going to be important in the sequel that I'm planning... :) Besides, I needed to bridge to the end... yes, the end... because it's ending. There's only three or four chapters left, to be honest. I'm sad and excited, because the next one is going to be epic. And people will DIE. -dramatic music- Well, hopefully, if I can actually manage to kill people off without you guys killing me or me killing myself. -demolishes pitchforks and other devices of torture-**

**Disclaimer: I don't own JONAS or WOWP. I think we all know that by now...

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**chapter twelve: safety pin swords**

**(nickpov)**

I suppose I deserved it.

I had lied, however pathetic it might have been, to my parents to try and keep them from finding out what I really was. I had hid, and somehow manipulated one of their own to set me free when was trapped. Somehow, I couldn't bring myself to be mad at my family for not showing up. I was more mad at myself for too many reasons to be mad at anyone else.

And even after I knew they weren't coming, I'd somehow detached myself from Alex, throwing punchlines and channeling all my anger at the one girl who was the only one I could truly trust. She was so forgiving, so willing to love me, and I wanted to love her back, so why was I so hesitant? I didn't want to rope her into my fate, but it was a little too late for that, and now it was impossible to save her, and I was hesitant because I wanted to do the impossible. I wanted to save the girl I loved.

It must have been hours I spent outside the hospital, crouched in the bushes, waiting for something to come of me. The word was so deafeningly silent that it killed me, and both Alex and even Samael were completely quiet. For some reason, though, I liked the silence. If it was going to kill me, than why not? Of course... now I wasn't even making sense. Great.

And time goes on...

"Hey." A girl walked over to me and sat down in the dirt as if it was completely normal for some guy to be hiding in a bush. She reminded me of that Penny girl I had a crush on once. They looked almost exactly alike, but she was just... different, and I couldn't quite place it. "Something wrong?"

"No, I'm hiding in a bush because I think it's fun," I muttered sarcastically, pulling up some grass and letting it fall through my fingers.

"Then can you tell me what you find so amusing about it?" she asked in the same sarcastic tone. When I stared at her for at least ten long seconds, she smiled. "Thought so." Continuing as if I actually did want her here, she said, "Well, I'm Juliet. And my boyfriend sent me over here to talk to you. Apparently you know his sister?"

"Depends."

"Well, do you?"

Silence.

"Justin. Justin Russo is my boyfriend. His sister is Alex. Ring any bells?" I must have flinched or something, because then she added, "Yeah, I knew it. You must be Nick, then."

"How do you know my name?" I snapped, before thinking anything through, and realizing that she might just know it for reasons other than stalking me.

She grinned. "I'll let you in on a secret – I know just about everything." I rolled my eyes at this, but she went on to state quite simply, "I'm a vampire."

"Great for you. I learned this four days ago, but I'm a wizard." Part of me said I should be scared that there was this bloodsucking monster sitting next to me, but according to what Alex had said earlier, my own family was more dangerous than her, so I stayed quiet. I had to trust her. It wasn't like I had anyone else to be with. "And just being different has torn my whole life apart."

"I know. Alex told me." She put her arm around me, and I pulled it right off again. Juliet looked stunned that I had the courage to manhandle a vampire like that. I simply didn't care. Angering a vampire could be the least of my problems. "Listen, she told me to invite you to stay with her. I mean, the whole Russo family."

I was startled by this invitation. How did they even know I had nowhere to go? I wanted so badly to turn it down, to keep my pride, but alone, I was so vulnerable, even with magic and everything on my side. "Sure," I sighed, giving in to the vampire's blinking blue eyes and my heart, beating faster and faster, wanting to see Alex. Stupid love. It got too complicated.

"Great!" Juliet pulled me to my feet and started to tow me along when she finally realized that I was pretty much incapacitated with my left leg encased in plaster from my foot to right below my knee. "Oh, sorry," she apologized, and handed me my crutches, letting me follow her into the building.

That's when I decided that drinking blood was the least of the factors that made me want to call a vampire "creepy."

**(stellapov)**

Nick was not in school the next day. And absolutely no one would tell me why. Every time his name would come up with a conversation, Joe and Kevin would immediately change the subject and, if necessary, pretend they didn't even know who I was talking about. Macy wasn't quite as bad, but it was obvious she was pretending she didn't know. It was like trying to kill someone with a stupid little pin – all you were going to do was scratch up the surface, but you weren't going to get deep.

And when he didn't show up the next day, either, I knew that there had to be something wrong, that there was something they were hiding. I planned my battle strategy well. Macy would be hard to crack, and Kevin, as obvious as it was that he was lying, wouldn't spill. I knew that I was one of Joe's only weaknesses, and if there was anyone to crack him...

"Joseph!" I called, rushing down the hallway. It was after school, and everyone had just about left, but he was there, taking his time putting his books in his bag.

"Yeah, what's up?" All nonchalant and innocent. There had to be something wrong with Nick... I narrowed my eyes and stood on my toes to reach his height. His own brown eyes suddenly got all intense and completely impossible to read. I looked away and at his ear so I wouldn't give in to them.

"Where's Nick?" I demanded. Better to go at it directly than to avoid it. Making Joe uncomfortable was something I was good at, and once he felt uneasy, he would sing like a canary.

He suddenly pushed me away from him. "And by Nick, you mean..?" he tried as an obvious and desperate attempt to divert the subject away from his little brother. "And for your information, I am not a bird."

I hadn't said that aloud, had I? "I didn't say anything about birds," I said, confused. Joe swore under his breath. Had he just read my mind...? "And you know perfectly well who Nick is. Your little brother? Curly hair, brown eyes? Pretty voice?"

"I thought that you thought that my voice was pretty," he pouted, trying to get me off the subject. I wasn't that easily thrown, however.

"Joe, get off the subject one more time and I will stab you with my safety pins, you got that?"

"Are you threatening me, Stella Malone?" He actually batted his eyelashesat me. I wanted to absolutely murder him at this point. Safety pins just weren't going to cut it. Why wouldn't he tell me the truth?

"Yes, yes I am," I said. "Now where's Nick?"

He sighed. _Please give in, please give in, please give in, _I thought desperately. Joe took a deep breath, and said, "No, Stella, I won't give in to you. Not this time."

Is it at all possible that he could read my mind? "Joe, please. I care about your brother, and I'd at least like to know that he's okay."

"I'm sure he's fine," he muttered stiffly.

"You mean you don't know?"

He looked into my eyes, and what I saw in them was the depth and knowledge of a thousand years. This wasn't the Joe I knew, this was someone else. "I can't tell you any more," he whispered softly, and walked away, leaving his locker door wide open and me standing there in the hallway with a million possibilities in my head about what exactly happened to Nicholas Jerry Lucas.

And none of them made sense.

* * *

I ran all the way to the firehouse so I would get home before Joe. I had to check one thing. "Oh, hey Stella," Mr. Lucas said as I walked in the door.

"Hey," I replied. "Um, is Nick here? 'Cause he wasn't at school today and I need to run something by him really quick."

A look of panic crossed over his face. "Sorry, Stella," he said. "I'm sure you heard about the accident yesterday. He's still at the hospital, I was just heading over there. Sorry 'bout that."

"Oh, can I come?" I asked, trying to stay innocent and naïve. Hopefully he wouldn't catch on to me. And I also hoped that he couldn't read my mind like his son apparently could.

"No, sorry, Stella. Family only. They're very strict about that," he said, trying to act apologetic.

"So you'll call me when he gets home? And he'll be in school tomorrow?"

"Probably not," he said, obviously lying at this point. "I'm sorry, Stella, but if you'd like, I could take whatever you want to give him."

I shook my head. "It's fine," I said. "Thanks anyway." And I walked out the door more confused than I had been when I first walked in there. Who else would know about Nick besides his family and besides Macy?

Then I thought of that girl at the sub shop we went to a couple days ago. Why did I think that she knew something? It was a stupid idea, but I drove there anyway, desperate for any information I could get about Nick.

The sign above the store said "Waverly Sub Station", and I opened the door slowly to a very busy restaurant. Dinner rush. Of course. Silently, I slipped inside and looked around. There was a large, sweaty man working the kitchen, a Latino woman waitressing, and a young boy with short brown hair clearing tables. Another boy with darker, messier hair in a waiter's apron was sitting at a table, talking to a pretty blonde-haired girl. And finally, there was a long, dark haired girl sitting behind the counter next to the most familiar face in the room – a curly haired, brown-eyed boy holding a guitar and smiling. That was how I almost missed him. It was the smile. It was so out of place on his face, but yet, it suited him quite well...

"Hi, welcome to Waverly Sub Station." I jumped when I heard someone start talking to me, and I whirled around to see the messy-haired boy standing behind me, his girlfriend playing with a straw at the table behind her. "Can I help you?"

"Um..." I didn't quite have a good excuse, nor did I even remember the girl's name. I had to start somewhere. "I'm here to see Nick, I guess."

He looked at me like I was insane. "Wait, do all the fans know that he's here? Are we going to get mauled?" He paused. "Are you some sort of super-stalker-fangirl?"

"No!" I said quickly. "I'm a friend."

"That's what they all say," he muttered, and towed me over to Nick. "This girl claims she knows you," he said, then walked away to go join his girlfriend again.

"Stella," Nick breathed. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Looking for you," I said. "Your brothers are being all dense and 'Nick who', and Macy knows something but won't tell me what, and your dad said you were at the hospital..." My eyes fell on his cast.

The smile faded from his face. "Why didn't you just trust him?"

"Because I knew he was lying. Joe was lying about it, and they wouldn't tell me, and I knew something was wrong. Why won't they tell me?"

"This isn't your fight, Stella," he said softly. "Maybe someday you'll learn, but for now it's best if you leave me alone. I'm not like you, none of us are. And if we could tell the truth, if I could tell you how my relationship with Joe and Kevin has changed, then I would, but the only part of the truth you can know is that you can't know. And it's for your safety as well as mine." His chocolate eyes glistened with tears. The girl had his arm in her hand and was squeezing it tight in warning. "I'm sorry."

"Fine," I whispered. "You can keep secrets. I'm sure it's worth it. What ever it is." And I ran out of the restaurant as Joe and Kevin ran in. And by the look on their faces, it didn't look like they were going to apologize to their brother.

The look on their faces seemed intent on death.


	13. consider me destroyed

**A/N: Right now is the time where I'm going to point out ALL PITCHFORKS AND OTHER TORTURE DEVICES were destroyed last chapter and that chibiyu wrote the second, third, and fourth paragraphs of Alex's POV below. So YAY to her, otherwise I would still be staring at an empty page.**

**Disclaimer: I have CERTAIN RIGHTS to the characters because my dad owns STOCK in Disney. SO THERE. I do (um, sorta?) own JONAS and WOWP. So therefore I can do ANYTHING I want to the characters and you no longer have the torture devices and pitchforks to threaten me otherwise.**

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**chapter thirteen: consider me destroyed**

** (nickpov)**

There's that feeling when you're doing something that could be dangerous, and you know that it's going to go wrong. That's how I felt. Like everything was about to go completely, terribly wrong. But there was more to that feeling this time; it was more intense. Everything wasn't just going to go wrong. Everything (as I knew it) was going to end.

Alex met my eyes, and even without speaking, we knew what the other was thinking. Silently, with the swiftest of movements, she slid the wands off the counter and pressed mine into my hand. My fingers wrapped around the cool metal, feeling the warmness of her own hand fade. She helped me off the stool and handed me my crutches, still none of us speaking a word. The room seemed eerily silent, even as it was packed with diners. No one seemed to notice the dark-clothed, suspicious-looking people coming towards the counter with things that looked like guns to me. Most people were smiling and happy, blissfully unaware of the scene that could unfold.

Justin noticed this as well, and before my brothers were halfway across the room, he rang a large bell, and hastily announced, "Sorry for the inconvenience, but Waverly Sub Station is closing early tonight. The Late Night Bite is open if you would like to go there instead." Then he leaped off a chair and began helping Juliet usher people through the door.

I wanted to walk away, to run away, well... to limp away, but I didn't want to seem like a coward, facing death of the most unpleasant kind: at the hand of my brothers. But either way, it seemed inevitable that something was going to happen, and that something was going to cause death.

I wasn't scared of death, though. I welcomed it. Alex knew what she was in, and we would be the perfect sacrifice for the wizarding world as well as the Angels, maybe to the point that they could get along. To the point where, considering I would still be alive, we could be brothers again? I hoped and dreamed of those days, those days where we were brothers and we did get along?

That was less than a week ago. I'd known that I was a wizard for four days, known Alex for four days, been bonded to her for three. Was I falling too hard, too fast again, or was it something to do with the spell? I didn't want to know, didn't need to know. Just my brain spinning, thinking up crazy things...

It had really been four days.

"Hello, Nicholas," Joe called to me as he approached, his tone of voice razor-sharp and emotionless. I tried to read his eyes, but found that I couldn't. Kevin's hazel eyes were easier, and I knew that he regretted this, that he regretted ever agreeing to be my enemy. And so did I.

"Joe." I acknowledged his greeting crisply and shortly, realizing I still didn't know the real reason for their visit. It could just be to say hello. Yet again, no one really called me Nicholas. So I just clung onto the hope that it could be that way...

Joe's fingers danced along the side of the weapon in his hand, shivering and sliding along the edge of the handgun, seeming to avoid the trigger. I watched them do this, and my own grip on my wand tightened. We all knew that we couldn't perform magic while there were mortals watching, but Joe wouldn't dare murder us in cold blood if there were witnesses. My eyes flickered to Kevin's hands. They were empty, but there was a black bag resting on his shoulder. "The prophecy," Joe whispered. "It's not going to come true. I'm not going to let it." Slowly, his hand noticeably shaking, he lifted the gun to be pointed at me. Alex reached over and squeezed my hand, her fingernails digging into my skin. I squeezed back.

"What if I decide to fight for our lives?" I whispered.

"He thought of that," Kevin muttered regrettably, and Joe motioned to the doorway. In came a ton of people, all clothed in exactly the same clothes that my brothers were wearing. In my plaid shirt and jeans, I suddenly felt glad to be unique. In my mind, that sounded stupid; a poison in my brain, even. (That just sounded slightly more poetic, and even now, my mind put it to a tune.) I was facing a certain death and I was feeling glad to be unique.

It's like a fog that blurs the sane.

"If one of us misses," a girl from the front line said, holding her own weapon upright and pointed at us, "another one will surely hit." She pulled another boy forward as she came to stand next to Joe, pushing the doubtful Kevin aside. "It might benefit you to know the names of some of your murderers. I'm Moira. And this is Robbie." She pointed to the tousle-haired boy next to her.

"I'm Nick, and this is Alex," I said, trying to put this off by even a couple of minutes. "Nice to meet you." My voice was dripping with sarcasm. How nice indeed.

Alex raised her wand so that it was pointed at Moira. "So you're threatening my boyfriend, huh?" she said, stepping forward. I pulled her back to my side; any distance that separated us made me that much more anxious. "No one messes with Alex Russo. No one."

"Way to sound cheesy," I hissed in her ear.

She ignored me. "And we don't fight alone, either."

This was when I noticed that Justin had disappeared, and then reappeared, leading people – the term people was used loosely, it also included goblins, ghouls, centaurs, vampires, and werewolves, among others – out of the lair. I had to smile. Maybe there was a small chance of the wizarding world winning. Probably with my life being given as sacrifice, but everything would end fine.

"Nick," I heard a voice whisper in my ear. I turned to face Macy, still in her Horace Mantis uniform. She smiled the smallest of smiles possible before saying, ever so softly, "Nothing has changed."

"So me and Alex are still going to die?" I whispered back.

She shrugged. "The future can change. I can't see what's going to happen to Alex, but there's just too much evidence pointing to yes." Her eyes flickered briefly to the left at a certain curly-haired brother of mine, the one who was slowly pressing himself into a corner, as if forgetting that he could become invisible if he wanted.

"Who does it?" I asked. Not that I really wanted to know.

Macy sighed and met Alex's eyes for a second, and from the looks of it, they'd talked at the hospital earlier. "I don't know," she said. "You'll have to wait and see."

_** Do not give up, young Kione.**_

That was the one voice I didn't want to hear. _Go away, leave me to die in peace. Go find some other guy to put up with your "I want to take over the world" schemes. This one's about to die._

_** You sound so sure about that.**_

_ I've learned not to argue with Macy Misa. You should have too. It's my leg you broke because of that._

_** And I'm sorry.**_

I tried not to snort. That would just make me seem odd. Not that any impression I made would have a lasting impression on me. _Sure you are._

"Nick, snap out of it," Alex whispered, nudging me. "You're not going to put up a fight?"

"Did he say something?" I said absentmindedly. "Wasn't listening."

She rolled her eyes and reverted to telepathy. _You're the only guy I know who wouldn't pay attention to what was going on just minutes before he's most likely going to die._

_ You're the only girl I know who can talk about her own demise so casually. _I sighed and tried to concentrate on whatever Joe was saying. I couldn't. It was in some language that I didn't know. And last I checked, he was getting a C- in Spanish. So that wasn't it.

_**It is time.**_

The statement did not surprise me, and all of a sudden I felt Samael trying to close in, take over, force me away. I wouldn't let him, I vowed to myself, for this was my battle, not his. Even if they wanted to kill me, I wouldn't let him take away the Angels' power or the wizards'. I would sooner sacrifice myself than do that.

"Nick," Alex breathed. I turned to her, trying to keep control. "Your eyes..."

"Oh, damn it," Macy muttered. I couldn't ask why, breaking concentration with my fight would make me lose. So I struggled inwardly, trying not to move my actual body and show any signs of weakness. I was already a target...

Was it too late for planning, for even beginning to come up with an idea? There was a feeling of restlessness coming from the crowd, and Justin was pointing his wand at Joe's throat, as if he was ready to say something. Before I could even try and stop what was going to happen, it did, and I found myself immersed in battle.

Yeah. It was way too late.

**(alexpov)**

The noise suddenly exploded, and I was pushed away from Nick as his hand was wrenched from mine. I wanted it back, but suddenly, I had a battle to fight, and there wasn't time for hesitation or thinking actions through. Acting upon impulse was what it was all about.

Spells colored the air as the hooves of centaurs, the cry of goblins, the shouts of Dark angels, the howl of werewolves and the hiss of vampires yearning for blood. I was caught in the middle of this chaos, my back covered with allies, my front surrounded by foes. But not only did I have life to worry about it this fray, I had Justin, Max and Nick. If any of them died, I would feel the pain tear out my heart and if Nick fell into the shadows of death's embrace, then I would have no chose but to follow. But right now, none of that mattered; only right here, right now mattered. I needed to find some way, a loophole of some sorts, to end this before everyone destroyed each other as well as themselves. I was Alex Russo, so how hard could finding one loophole be?

I turned to again gaze at both conflicting sides of the battle as my friends protected my sides. I saw Kevin and the other Dark angels, but no Nick or Joe. In fact, I couldn't feel Nick either. But if he were dead I would be... so why did my heart pounded faster than the speed of a spell when I couldn't find him? And Joe... he held the gun before, aiming to kill his own brother... so would he really do it? Could he do it?

I heard a scream somewhere and I turned to see Joe running, full speed, away from something I couldn't see, his hand covering a long scratch on his face that trickled blood onto the ground. I heard a cold laugh ad my heart stopped beating for a second in fear and realization. Both sides stopped their assault and turned to see Nick, standing tall, black eyes, pale as death, and a small smirk lighting up his merciless face.

The room was silent, no one could speak. Nick had gotten up on a table and stood to address us all. "Nick," I managed to whisper. "Nick, please, no..."

But, of course, it wasn't even Nick in control anymore. He'd spoken his last words; he was going to die and never be able to control his own body again. My mind spun back to what he'd last said to me. His last words. "Wasn't listening," he'd said. Maybe he should have been.

_Nick! _I screamed in my head, but he didn't respond. I felt so lost, so useless... what the hell was happening?

My head was spinning, my thoughts were clouded and confused, a vine I just couldn't untangle of messed up thoughts in my head. I felt myself falling, I felt myself landing, and I heard Nick talking, but it wasn't him and he didn't care that I was on the floor, sobbing, crying... I didn't even hear him. He was completely gone.

"Alex, Alex, Alex," Justin tried to soothe me, but I sobbed and sobbed for him, for Nick, clinging onto that last hope that he could still hear me...

It wasn't Nick up there talking, it was Samael, saying his plan of evil, explaining the prophecy that everyone already knew from those stupid fairy tales. Stupid non-made up characters, stupid everything, stupid life... I wanted to die. I wanted to never be born, to die with him, to lose myself.

Through my tears, I saw Joe and Kevin step forward, side-by-side. Nick towered above him, black eyes like daggers. I couldn't hear them above my own sobs, but Nick's lips were moving and Joe said something back. Kevin was trembling.

I had to think of them of what they truly were, the enemy, Adrian and Corbett, the ones who were out to destroy us all... but it wasn't them. Now they were up against their own "brother", or someone controlling their brother. Nick was a puppet, Samael's puppet, helpless to his whim. As he held Nick's wand outstretched, I started to cry again and closed my eyes, hoping to drown out the sound of death coming so close...

Yet, I could hear Joe whisper, ever-so-clearly, three words that showed that maybe he did really care: "I'm sorry, Nick." There was a gasp, like one of my sobs, and a bang, a crack, the sound of a gun...

I waited for death, for blackness, for everything to finally be over... but it never came. I couldn't bring myself to look, but the silence, besides my gasping sobs, was so stifling that I forced my eyes open to look at the scene around me. If I was even beginning to worry about my pride, I wouldn't have to worry, because no one was looking at me except for Justin, and even his attention was distracted. I couldn't see what was happening, but I was wondering, and hoping, that something had happened, something good, something...

I felt like I was thinking in run-on sentences, it was ridiculous. "Impossible," Justin said, looking back down at me. I began to sob again, more tears cascading from my eyes. What was so impossible? What had everyone so captivated.

"The Russo girl's still alive," I heard someone say, someone who wasn't Justin, a voice I didn't recognize. Suddenly, everyone was around me, crowding me, saying my name, touching my arm. I continued to cry, even though everything was over. "How is this..." The voice sounded amazed.

"Alex," I heard a more familiar voice whisper. Kevin. "Alex, can you talk to me? To us?"

I swallowed my tears. "Yes," I whispered. "Ju-Justi, what happened?" I couldn't seem to get the last part of my brother's name out of my mouth.

He didn't reply, he just hugged me, and Max came out of nowhere and hugged me too. I was more confused now than anything, everyone was staring... I began to feel more and more self-conscious now. "What's going on?"

"You fainted," Justin said, trying to hide something. He wasn't that good of a liar. I began to shake again. "It's okay, Alex."

"No one would stop a freaking battle because some girl _fainted,_" I said, trying to act normal. "I'm not that special, and obviously something's wrong."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a tear streak down Joe's cheek. No one wanted to answer my statement, to prove me right, but no one would prove me wrong, either. The silence was so ridiculous...

"Alex, no crying," Justin said softly. "But... Nick's..."

My heart beat faster, no, no, no no no no no no no no that was impossible no no no how the heck... no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no

I didn't hear the last word. I was sobbing and sobbing and sobbing and there was absolutely nothing that could stop me. Somehow, he'd found that loophole. And he'd managed to save me.

What if he knew I didn't want to be saved? What if he knew that I wanted to die with him? What did it matter?

It was absolutely, positively, too freaking late.

* * *

**A/N: -evil evil laugh- I quote the great Adam Young of Owl City: "Everything is never as it seems..."**

**And I quote the great Nicholas Jonas of the Jonas Brothers: "Don't ever let it be world war III." Please note that Nick Jonas is NOT Nick Lucas and I would NEVER consider killing him. Especially because I have yet to see him in concert tomorrow and Wednesday. :) So don't expect updates until Friday, when I'm done spazzing. :) DEAL WITH THE CLIFFY!**


	14. city of tears, city of owls

**A/N: I'm alive! Isn't Nick's new album amazing? I'm really hyper. It's really strange how I write really depressing stuff when I'm hyper. So I'm tied to my chair and here's the next chapter! The title is because there are too many Owl City references in this chapter to pick just one. Anyone want to count them? I counted at least… well um, I gave up.**

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**chapter fourteen: city of tears, city of owls**

The sub shop was empty and quiet of all life but me. The part that hit me hard was the fact that there were two bodies in the room. One living, one dead. He was so cold, so lifeless, and I cried as if I could change it with my own warm tears. He lay on the floor, and I lay next to him, trying to imagine his warmth.

"Alex," I heard a voice whisper. Justin. "Alex, come upstairs."

"No," I managed to choke out. "I'm staying here." I paused. "Unless we can bring him upstairs too."

My brother's face came into focus. "I don't think Mom would be too happy if you had a boy in your bed, even if he is dead." He chuckled a little, as if it was supposed to be funny that Nick was dead. "Seriously, Alex. It's eleven o'clock."

"I haven't slept in two days." I never left Nick's side, and cold nostalgia chilled me to the bone like his cold skin. "So, no." I pulled him closer to me and hugged him to my chest like a teddy bear. His arm flopped down around my back as if he was hugging me back. More tears sprung to my eyes.

Justin paused to consider my answer. "Would you like me to bring you a blanket, then?"

"I'd like that," I breathed, and curled up in a little ball, my head next to Nick's, his open eyes staring into mine. As Justin left, I sat up and, very gently, closed each eyelid one at a time. Now, with the wonders of magical healing, it just looked like he was sleeping. I pulled him back close to me as Justin draped a blanked around our forms. "Justin?" I whispered as I watched his retreating back.

"Yes?"

"How did he die?"

My brother walked back over to me. "Well, um, Joe kind of shot him in the chest." Kind of. I wanted to laugh.

"No." I shook my head. "Maybe I should phrase it like this: how am I still alive?"

He sighed. "I don't know, Alex. I honestly don't know."

Those words sent me to sleep that night, a constant lullaby in my head: "I don't know, Alex. I honestly don't know."

~*~*~*~*~*~

While I slept, I dreamt.

I dreamt of his voice.

I was in a room, with Nick's white baby grand piano and black walls, wearing a cream white, flowing dress that cut off right above my knees and no shoes. There was no doors, no windows, no way out. Just me and a piano. Nick's piano.

_Alex… _His voice, so enticing, so warm, so lovely, so real, so fake. I wanted it, I wanted him. I wanted more than a dream, I wanted reality. A perfect reality. I didn't want a dream.

_You may be asleep, but this isn't a dream. _His voice again, so perfect and real, wonderful in my ears, and I didn't care that he was lying to me. I just stood there in the middle of the room, dumbstruck by the flawlessness of my mirage. And it began to rain, and I realized there was no ceiling. So like a little girl, I began to twirl, the fabric of my dress spinning with me, my wet hair flying.

_What are you doing? _he asked me, so lightly, teasingly.

_Life isn't about how you survive the storm, but how you dance in the rain, _I told him, my spirits lifting. I stopped spinning and looked to the sky, letting the rain cascade down my face. If he was here, even if it wasn't real, then everything was better.

I could have sworn I heard his laugh. _That's my girl._

My eyes fell on the piano, glistening with raindrops which shone like ten thousand fireflies in an nonexistent moonlight. Slowly, I walked towards it, and when I got there, my fingers brushed the keys lightly, black and white, white and black and wet all over. I pressed one key, then another. Suddenly, I felt him next to me, guiding my fingers over the keys. I sat down and let him do his thing. Soon my simple little notes became chords, which became songs. And he sang to me, in words that only his music could express. About how he felt. About his final minutes.

_all of you have shaped me into what i am  
____carried out the bitter man  
__do you have a master plan, oh no  
__somewhere i let all my defenses down  
__never thought to turn around  
__and you did not make a sound_

My fingers glided effortlessly over the keys, yet I was not the one moving them. As he sung, he moved them for me. I was the physical shell he lacked, just as he was the happiness that I'd lost. Together, we weren't two different beings, we were one, he the spirit that kept me alive and me the empty shell that depended him on for everything. And as he sang, I cried, my tears blending with the rain. The water turned salty in my mouth.

_see it turning red  
__like a bullet through my chest  
__lay me down to rest  
__it's a lover's final breath_

_and i found out nothing comes without a cost  
__life was just a game we lost  
__do you have a better thought?_

He continued to play, but didn't sing anything. Instead he whispered in my ear, _You sing, Alex. _

My fingers began to shake, and his guiding touch couldn't calm them. My mind scrambled to think of something. "Now you're gone," I sang softly, "and nothing's ever felt so wrong, a moment seems to last song long, did you have a fear so strong?" I took a deep breath and exhaled. Could it be that all our emotions could somehow fit in this one song?

_now i die, kiss your tender lips goodbye  
__pray to God who hears my cry._

_How is death? _I asked him softly as he ended the song and I pulled my fingers off the keys. _Is it peaceful?_

_I wouldn't know, _he breathed, and my heart leaped for the sky. Slowly, I stood up from the piano and walked back to the center of the room as the rain slowed. I began to twirl again, relishing the little bit of rain I had left to dance in. I had something to celebrate.

And then I remembered that it was all a dream and my heart sunk again. I fell to my knees and began to cry again as the rain stopped completely._ Don't cry, _he whispered, but I only bawled I'd lost him, I'd lost him forever, and not even a dream could try and fix my broken heart.

_Alex, you're not dreaming. I swear. _He sounded so small all of a sudden, hurt, almost, and I believed him, anything to keep him with me. I had to ask him.

"Then promise me that you'll stay," I said to the air around me, struggling to see through my tears. "Don't ever leave me." I paused to clear my throat. "I love you, Nick. It's not the same without you, and when I think of you, I don't feel so alone."

_I love you too, Alex. _And even without a physical form of his own, somehow I felt his hand in mine and my heart skipped a beat. _I'll always be with you; you'll never have be alone._

"Always," I whispered aloud. "I like that." Sighing, I lay down on the floor, his spirit wrapped around my body, my heart feeling whole. I believed him because I wanted to be an optimist for once, and I wanted believed that it wasn't a dream. And even if it was, he would always be with me, always in my heart. If my heart was a house, he'd be home.

I fell asleep again thinking of just that.

~*~*~*~*~*~

"Alex, wake up."

Max was shoving me lightly in the side, but all his consistent pushing had made me land on top of Nick so that I was in a very awkward position on his chest. "Max, stop!" I shrieked, and pushed him away so I could roll to my right a little. "Go away."

"Mom says to get upstairs and help make breakfast for our guests," Max said, trying to pull me to my feet, recovering quickly from when I'd pushed him.

"For a murderer? No thank you." I desperately tried to hide the fact that I wasn't really mad at Joe – he'd done what he had to do, and killed Samael. But for all intensive purposes, and for the sake of holding a grudge, I pretended to hate him with a passion. And it wasn't hard, he had killed Nick. He just… hadn't meant to.

If that made any sense at all.

Max shook his head. "They want your help planning the memorial service," he added, as an obvious afterthought. Another pause. "Mom made me chocolate chip pancakes…"

"They'll drag me away over my dead body," I snapped, "and his too." Then I began thinking of ways I could escape. The sight of a teenage girl dragging some guy's body through New York City wouldn't be that weird, would it? No, that was weird and sketchy, even for this city. Maybe I could just hide in the lair – wizard hunters couldn't get in there without a wizard to let them in, and maybe I could get Justin to help seal it from everyone else… or maybe look in the spell book…

The spell book. The key to all my problems. Could it be at all possible to use magic to bring someone to life again? "You know what, Max?" I told him. "I'll be up in, like, five minutes, okay?"

"Okay!" he said brightly, and ran upstairs. How anyone could be so happy after anyone's death, I wasn't sure, but this was Max. He was confused enough about everything else around him. After he had left, I picked up Nick and held him bridal-style in my arms and went to the lair, where I placed him down gently on the couch. It still looked like he was sleeping, so peaceful and beautiful. Then I started to flip through the wizard encyclopedia.

Under "death" I found the following:

**If you're looking for ways of killing people using magic (i.e. torture spells, plagues, monsters, etc), please contact your local wizard police department.**

**If you're looking for the life expectancy rate of magical creatures, see the chart on page pi and a half.**

**If you're looking for documents detailing the Salem Witch Trials, please find a time machine and seek further instruction.**

**If you're looking for information about the fictional killing curse, _Avada Kedavra, _read "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J.K. Rowling.**

**There are no spells that are used strictly for killing. However, there are ways of indirect death such as severe injuries and controlling someone's mind so they may want to jump off a cliff. Again, if you are considering attempting any one of these things, please contact the police.**

**There is no known way to revive someone from the dead. Wizard scientists have determined that to at least have a small chance of success, you must acquire a piece of the person's soul, which is quite impossible, because the person you are trying to revive is dead. If you believe otherwise, please seek a psychiatrist's help immediately.**

**For the revival of the song "Death", by Explicit, a wizard band, contact your local music store and ask for-**

I slammed the book shut. I was thinking how I could find a way to get that when I thought of my dream. He'd said it wasn't a dream, he'd said that he wasn't dead. My thoughts from last night came back to me. He'd been almost like a ghost, his spirit was inside of me, in my heart, as if my heart was a house.

_If my heart was a house, you'd be home, _I thought, my words ringing through my head. _You're home, Nick._

The lights flickered in the room, and I felt the same sort of feeling I remembered from my dream, carefree and… happy. I felt Nick. _So are you, love, _he whispered.

I wanted to cry from happiness. _Oh darling, I wish you were here._

_I am here, _he whispered, but the words were half meant – he wasn't really here, not in the way I meant it and the way we wanted it.

"I have it," I whispered aloud, staring at the page. "Nick, I have part of your soul. I could try, couldn't I?"

_Alex, you do realize that doing this kind of magic could kill you. I don't have to be raised as a wizard to realize that._

"I have nothing to lose," I breathed. "You're the only thing I really live for, now, Nick. You gave me a real reason to do something with my life other than ruin other people's. And I barely knew you, and yet, I feel like we were _meant _to be together. Soulmates." I looked up to the ceiling. "Ever heard of the soulmate principle?" He didn't respond, so I continued, "Justin told me about it after you… um, died. It's a theory that scientists have – both wizards and mortals – that some people are meant to be together. That everyone has a soulmate. Whether you meet them or not, it doesn't matter, but they're out there somewhere."

_Sometimes in your head, _he added wryly. _Sometimes they die._

"Hey, you said yourself that you're not dead," I fired back playfully, still speaking aloud, then added silently, _I never believed it myself._

_Shut up, I know you did, _he replied. _I can kind of hear all your thoughts, you know._

"And I can't hear yours?" I muttered.

_My thoughts are your thoughts._

"Great." I was a bit more enthusiastic than I sounded.

"Who are you talking to?" I heard Justin call, and I flinched. Justin wouldn't buy any of my excuses.

"No one," I replied innocently, and sat down next to Nick's body, my hand on where his dead heart was hidden under his skin. "Myself, really."

"Sure," he said, coming into the room, eyeing me suspiciously. "Anyway, Mom's getting really pissed. And at least Kevin wants you upstairs." He gently avoided Joe's name. I was getting anxious. I wanted to try to save Nick, my one last chance. Ideas were spinning in my head, and I was ready to sacrifice my power and my life for his own.

"Justin, give me some time," I said, exasperated, cracking my knuckles because I knew it grossed him out.

He sighed and left the room without another word, leaving me to my spell work. _How do you think I should do this? _I asked Nick.

_You shouldn't, Alex. I don't want you to kill yourself._

_Nick, please. I'm stronger than that._

_That doesn't mean anything. I bet full wizards have died trying._

_They obviously didn't have the thing they need, the soul._

_It's not a proven fact. Those scientists, they could be wrong. I don't want you risking your life for me. Somehow I managed to save you the first time._

I sighed and put his head on his chest, trying to imagine a heartbeat. _I didn't want to be saved. If you were going to die, I wanted to die. _I paused. _I'm going to try, Nick. You can't stop me, and I'm sorry._

_You're right, I can't. _He regretted that. In his own way, he wanted me to do it. He wanted a body of his own, the ability to stop me, to touch me, to love me. Love me even more. He wanted it for me, for his brothers, for the fans. And as soon as he'd sent the words, I knew he hadn't meant them, that even if he could stop me, he wouldn't.

I took a breath, catching out of the corner of my eye the slightest bit of movement. I figured if it was so hard to do this, I would need all my power. I squeezed my eyes shut and forced it into my hands so that it was a glowing orange sphere, with a small blue streak going around it, a fuzzy blue light, something I'd never seen before. _Nick, _I whispered in my head, but he couldn't hear me anymore. I was holding him in my hands.

"I love you, and I always will," I said aloud, aware and yet not aware that Justin, Kevin, Joe, and Max were watching me from the doorway. And, using all my strength, I pushed all my power into the boy I loved and felt it leave my body along with my strength and all my feeling as I plunged into darkness.

_So this is dying, _I thought as I fell, fell fast into a dark void of nothingness, of black and red and red and black. An avalanche, a blood-red-strawberry avalanche of numbness. The ground never came, I never hit anything, I just fell and fell and fell.

But it felt so good.

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**A/N: I counted nine... maybe I missed one... either way review please! I updated for you all, so I expect something back... :)**

we are the world, we are the children, we are the ones who make a brighter day so let's start giving...


	15. my soulmate

**A/N: Last chapter! It's long. But it's great. Not really. It's corny. But that'll have to do. I hope you've enjoyed this so far, because I've enjoyed writing it! Thanks for reading, please review... blah blah blah... :) enjoy.

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**chapter fifteen: my soulmate (??? pov...fine it's nick's pov. saw that coming, didn't you?)**

I was falling, not down, but up. It was a blur of blue and red and black and blue and color, and I felt dizzied by the sudden flash of hue as opposed to the sensation of being blind that I experienced being a ghost, a virtually non-existent being. And there was pain, I could feel again, and noise, like the starting of a very loud, yet gentle chainsaw. It beat steady, like a drum now, and I focused on counting it. It was calming.

Then I realized that it was my heart. My heart? Alex's heart?

My heart.

My eyes were suddenly thrust open by some unseen force, and I was staring at the ceiling. I squeezed them shut again almost immediately and used my other senses to analyze where exactly I was. A place with a ceiling, obviously. I was lying on a couch of some sort, the plush fabric was soft to my fingertips, but I didn't let them move, trying to keep up my façade of being dead. Because I was certain there were other people in the room; I could hear them breathing.

Was I alive, or was I dead?

The air was clean, and I took small breaths of the fresh air. I could hear the people moving a couple feet away, and I tried very hard to look motionless.

"Alex," I heard Justin whisper, and soon he was by my side, pushing my seemingly dead body onto the floor. I liked the pain that came with the landing. It reinforced this illusion that I was alive. That Alex may have actually done something right.

"Be careful!" I heard Kevin snap, and soon he was here too, except he was touching me. "She tried to save him." I felt his cold fingers on my neck, and heard a small gasp when he felt the steady beat of my pulse. To my surprise, he didn't say a word, barely acknowledged that I was alive.

Dead alive dead alive dead alive dead alive dead alive _alive._

"Max, go get Dad. Now," Justin said to his younger brother, and I heard the sound of footsteps running away. "I'm going to take her outside. For the ambulance. Joe, can you…" He trailed off. I assumed that Joe had taken out his phone. "Follow me," he said, and they left the room as well, leaving me here with Kevin.

My older brother wasted no time rechecking my pulse and listening to my heartbeat, my pretty drumbeat heart. "Nick?" he whispered, ever-so-softly, but I could hear him, I was alive…

Slowly, I opened one eye and then the other. Kevin yelped softly, and pulled me off the ground so that I was sitting up in his arms, holding me so tightly that I could barely even breathe. "Kevin, you're choking me," I managed to get out between gasps of air.

"Sorry," he whispered, releasing me from his death grip. "But if you're choking, then you're breathing." He hugged me again, and rather reluctantly, I returned it, letting him cry soft, silent, happy tears in my arms. And I had to admit, I might have cried a little too. At least one of my brothers didn't want me dead. And I wasn't dead, I was alive… alive, alive alive.

But now Alex was dead, close to dead, so close to dead. Was this just some kind of circle? "Alex," I whispered, trying to pull away again. "Now she's dead, died so that I could live. I'm not worth that."

"To me, you are," Kevin replied softly, "especially because she's not dead." He paused. "Yet, anyway, I mean, there's still a chance she could…" Just like Kevin to add the stuff someone didn't want to hear.

I wrenched out of his arms anyway and practically leaped to my feet. "Come on!"

"Nick, no, you can't," he said, standing up as well. "They think _you're _dead, remember? You can't just-"

"So?" I interrupted, starting for the door, but he grabbed my arm, which prevented me from going any further. Then something sunk in, something that Kevin had actually thought to leave out. "You didn't, um, tell the…"

He looked a little sheepish. "We had to. It only made sense, I mean, the battle itself attracted the media's attention, and your dead body at the scene was something we really couldn't hide." There was a beat of silence, then he continued, "The cover story was that there was a unidentified gang who raped and killed a whole bunch of people in the sandwich shop, including you. There was one other girl who died – Moira, if you remember her – and a whole lot were injured, but overall, it wasn't hard to create a cover story. It had to be done." My brother looked to the ground, more specifically, to his shoes, which I noticed were stained with blood. "But to everyone, to the world, Nick, you're dead."

I remembered the numb, senseless world of half-death and shuddered. But Alex was out there dying, and whether I was legally dead or not, I wanted to be with her. "It doesn't matter," I said, trying to sound confident, when I really wasn't. "I want to be with her, and that's that." I looked Kevin right in the eye and didn't let my gaze wander. His grip slackened on my arm, and I was dead. Screw that I was "dead". I didn't care.

But when I walked into the restaurant, there had to be a million people there. Or maybe there was half of what there had been in the battle, but still, there were too many innocent, non-magical bystanders. Kevin was right – if Nick Lucas showed up, alive, that might freak everyone out more than they could already be freaked by Alex's… um, accident? I hid behind the counter in the kitchen and sighed, leaning up against the wall.

Kevin came out from the lair and gave me one of his "I was right" looks. I stuck out my tongue, playfully, right back, and I was reminded of how great it would be to be six again. No worries of love, and the only fights you got into were over snacks and toys with your brothers or your kindergarten friends from school.

As my older brother left the kitchen, my fingers found a wand – Max's wand. Sleek, white, and powerful. Did I hold enough power to change something in the past? From countless movies and books, I knew the dangers of messing around with time. I wanted to do it so bad, but maybe the world would be better off thinking that I was dead. It broke my heart, but not as much as it would be if Alex died.

If this was how it was meant to be, I wasn't going to try to change it.

Slowly, still holding Max's wand, I crawled out on my hands and knees and looked around the corner. The sandwich shop was packed with bystanders, while Justin, Max, and their parents were close to the center with Alex. Justin held Joe's phone in his hand, still on the line with the operator from 911, and Joe stood by the spiral staircase, watching the scene intently, Kevin by his side.

I stood up and slipped on a pair of sunglasses that I found on the table – probably Justin's – and began to make my way towards my brothers, slipping in and out of the bodies that stood around, staring at the poor family who had just gone through too much…

"Kevin," I hissed, hoping Joe wouldn't hear me. But both boys turned their heads to look at me. Joe's eyes widened, and a smile spread across his face. Without speaking or even trying to draw attention to himself, he ran over to me and gave me a big hug, another equivalent of Kevin's death grip I had received earlier. This from the boy who tried to kill me. And just about succeeded, too.

I was quite honestly confused.

"Joe, what are you doing?" I whispered, trying to escape.

"I'm sorry," he sobbed, and sure enough, he was crying while he held me in his arms. Tentatively, I reached out and hugged him back. "Nick, I didn't want to kill you, but I didn't want you – um, or someone pretending to be you – to kill the world. I figured that you wouldn't mind. I'm sorry… either way, no matter what, we're always going to be brothers, if not by blood, then by spirit. And I wish we'd found that loophole, but while one of you lives, Nick, how come one of you dies?"

"She's not going to die." I tried to say that as surely as I could, but I was crying too, and anything I tried to make sound confident came out as mush.

"I admire your optimism."

"So do I."

The paramedics arrived then, and frantically, I hid behind Kevin, finally managing to get Joe to release me. "So… will you forgive me?" Joe whispered as we watched Alex get taken away. I felt absolutely horrible hiding, but one less person who felt this way, the better…

"Of course, Joe," I replied. "I… um… understand that it wasn't really me who you wanted to kill. If that made sense."

"Did it work?" The panic and forgiveness in my brother's eyes was genuine.

"As far as I know." I didn't know anything about Samael. He was gone, or he wanted me to think he was gone. And as far as I knew, I was finally my own free being. Maybe I had no biological, "genuine" parents, but as far as my definition of the word went, I had a genuine family.

"Good."

The sirens echoed in my brain as the sub shop cleared, even after they were gone. "Can we go to the hospital?" I asked my brothers softly, taking off my glasses once we were the only ones left in the room. Kevin took them from me. "I want to see her."

I didn't let them answer, Max's wand was clutched tight in my hand and we were there in the parking lot before either of them could react. I was surprised, and yet I wasn't. My magic followed my heart, and my heart followed Alex.

But there was something missing. Suddenly, I noticed the absence of her from my mind, the complete absence, like she was never there in the first place. The realization came quickly, and I realized with a jolt that she'd managed to break the bond. We were once again two separate people, two separate souls, no longer dependant on each other. And my heart had never felt so empty. As mistakes went, it wasn't a horrible one…

"Nick!" Kevin exclaimed, turning to glare at me. I'd forgotten that using wizard magic – strong magic like a teleportation spell, even an accidental one – wasn't favorable by Angels. Joe was on the ground, eyes open in shock, and Kevin was clinging to a tree in absolute panic. They didn't look hurt, though.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to!" I exclaimed, looking around at the hospital parking lot. "Listen, I can take you two back if you want, but I'm staying."

"I'm not going through that again," Kevin muttered, and handed me my sunglasses again. I slipped them on.

"Ambulances should be able to do that," Joe muttered, getting to his feet. "It would be much more efficient and probably save many more lives." His eyes locked on an emergency vehicle pulling in. "Bet that's Alex."

At that, I took off across the parking lot towards where the paramedics were unloading her. I didn't even bother to hide from Justin; I didn't see any point. I walked by his side right into the building and he didn't even seem to think that it was at all paranormal. "Nick," he hissed. "What are you-"

"You know, Alex is a better wizard than you give her credit for," I replied softly, cutting him off.

"I guess so," he whispered, and pushed me forward. "She's your girlfriend. Now it's your turn to save her."

I stumbled a bit over my feet, and with the Russos only a couple steps behind me, entered the intensive care unit. My heart was pounding, almost in a steady beat with the beeping of a patient's heart monitor. "Did they figure out what's, um, wrong with her?" I asked Justin.

"Exhaustion," he replied. "Not exactly life-threatening, but apparently it seems to them like she hasn't eaten or drank in days, but yet ran a marathon anyway."

"Silly. Alex wouldn't run a marathon."

"I tried to tell them that. But I don't think they'd believe me if I said she tried to bring someone back to life – and succeeded."

We were stopped in a lobby, seemingly friendly and innocent. "Have a seat, kids," the receptionist said in a sugar-coated voice as Justin, Max, and I all watched Alex's stretcher disappear down the hallway. "Are they your sons?" she asked Jerry and Theresa as they walked over to sign papers.

Their parents noticed me for the first time. Mr. Russo gaped at me, while Mrs. Russo seemed to recover a bit more quickly, but what she said showed that she hadn't. "The littler one and the one with the, um, straighter hair is mine, the curly-haired boy is my daughter's dead boyfriend."

Max snorted. I took off my glasses, a little sheepishly. "She's in shock," Justin called over, trying to cover up while his dad still stared at me. "Worried. So are we."

"Maybe it's because he looks a lot like Nick Lucas," the receptionist sighed. "What a shame. Did you hear about his death? Such a talented young boy. So much promise and potential. It's so sad when they die this young."

As the adults started to talk, I whispered to Justin, "So, um, yeah, any way you think we could change that?"

"The fact that everyone thinks you're dead?" He shook his head. "No, not without going back in time, and that's extremely risky. Although as far as impossible magic goes, Alex seems to be pretty good at that. No one's ever resurrected anyone from the dead before."

"Let's not forget where Alex is right now," I murmured softly, my eyes looking towards the swinging doors of the emergency room. "I don't want her to die because she wanted me to live. If anyone should be dead, it should be me."

"She's not going to die," Justin and Max said simultaneously. I didn't want to argue with them – I was thinking the same thing, those four words on constant repeat in my head like a broken record.

As their parents walked through the doors of the ER, Max noticed that I had his wand. "Hey, that's mine!" he said, taking it from me. "Did Alex give it to you?"

"I found it on the floor," I mumbled, not really caring. "How do you think I got here?"

"He doesn't use much logic," Justin whispered in my ear.

"I see."

That was when it sunk in that we were not the only ones in the waiting room. There was a girl, maybe about eleven, staring at us from behind a magazine. Self-consciously, I picked up my own magazine (ironically, _Popstar!_) and pretended to be very interested in an article about Justin Bieber going back to his school or something. I went to school all the time, and no one seemed to care, but when he went somewhere, of course the world followed…

Then I remembered. I was dead. Unless there were going to be fangirls following me to the grave, I wouldn't be stalked again. Which was a shame. I wasn't dead, and I didn't want to be dead.

And yet, I was. At least legally dead.

"Um, excuse me, can I read that magazine when you're done?" It was the girl. My hands shaking, I handed her the magazine and looked away. "Oh my gosh…" she squealed, causing everyone, including the nurses and the receptionist, to look my way. I shoved the glasses on my face and pretended to be interested in the tile pattern on the floor. "You're Nick Lucas!"

"Isn't he dead?" I managed to get out.

"I think…" She shook her head. "No, you're him, I swear, I'm like, your biggest fan!"

"What, did you fall and hit your head or something?" All I wanted was to know that Alex was okay. Dealing with annoying, depressed fangirls and my own fictional demise I could do later. "Is that why you're in the emergency room? Because that's generally why people come here."

She sighed. "No, my brother broke his arm."

"My sister's unconscious because she brought him back to life!" Max piped up. Justin looked ready to strangle his little brother. I was too. The girl was gaping at all of us now, open-mouthed.

"So you are Nick Lucas…"

"Um, no. Yes. Sort of?" I said weakly. "Don't hurt me. Please."

"You're alive…"

"No, he's a vampire," Justin said, trying out sarcasm.

The girl screamed just as Joe and Kevin walked through the doors. I grabbed Max's wand right out of his hand, and used magic to push them right back through. They'd probably be mad later, but at the moment… "How are you alive?" she demanded, grabbing my shirt. Some genius had put it on backwards; I noticed that in the back there was a hole with a dark bloodstain.

Justin pulled his own wand out and held it out towards the girl, muttering a series of words under his breath. Her eyes suddenly became distant and emotionless, and just as she fell over, he caught her and placed her in a chair. "Memory spell," he whispered. "She won't remember any of this."

"They will." I pointed to the nurses and receptionist who had been watching, not to mention Joe and Kevin, hiding in the doorway.

Alex's older brother sighed and hung his head. "Damn it. I'll have to do a mass memory spell."

"It's, like, the one spell he's not good at," Max chimed in.

Justin glared at his little brother. "Why don't you go get a soda, Max?" he said sweetly, handing him a dollar. "I bet Joe and Kevin would go with you." My brothers nodded and escorted Max out of the room. Then he turned to me. "Nick, try to stay still. I'll have to work around you." He squeezed his own eyes shut and started mumbling another spell. A cloud of haze began to fill the room, and I began to feel a little light-headed – the effects of the spell. I grasped onto my memories, trying to remember as much as I could.

Suddenly, the haze turned black and Justin fell to the ground, groaning. There was a sound like an explosion, then everything was clear. "Justin, you okay?" I whispered, shaking him. He looked up at me. "What happened?"

"I messed up." I offered him my hand and he took it, standing up. "Still remember everything okay?"

"Yeah," I replied, looking around at all the other people, who were also on the floor or, in the receptionist's case, slumped back in their chairs. Out in the hallway, I saw that Max, Joe, and Kevin had also been affected by the spell.

Out on the street, people out there had as well.

"Quick, Justin, get down," I muttered, and pulled him back down again as we pretended to lay motionless on the floor.

"Why?"

"I think your memory spell went a little too far," I said. "Like, on the street, far. We have to pretend to be affected by it."

"Shit, see, I told you I was no good at this."

The receptionist was the first to recover. "What just happened?" she asked, looking at us as if she thought we did it. Which, you know, we kind of did.

"I don't know," I said slowly, standing up and sitting back down in the chair, trying to look casual. The girl who had started all this stared at me, but this time didn't say anything. I let her stare at the back of my head while Justin twiddled his thumbs uselessly.

After five minutes, Max, Joe, and Kevin returned from the vending machine, my older brothers looking completely exasperated and Max with a devilish smile on his face and a soda in hand. "Have fun?" I asked, smiling.

"Tons of it," Joe muttered, and sat down next to me, opposite from Justin. Kevin sat down next to him.

When I looked up again some ten minutes later, the girl was standing in front of me (closer to Joe, thank God). "Hi," she whispered. She was grinning widely. "Um, can I have an autograph?"

"Sure," Kevin said, smiling. He had no idea what we had been through before, he didn't remember the whole ordeal. No one but me and Justin did. She held out a piece of paper and had Kevin sign it, then Joe. But when she stopped at me, I just stared. Isn't it a bit odd to ask a dead guy for an autograph?

"Aren't you going to sign it?" she asked, pushing it into my hands.

"Um, yeah, sorry. I was spacing out." Confused, I scrawled my name on the paper and met Justin's eyes. They were wide, and a funny little smile was on his face.

"Hey, um, Max," he said, turning to his little brother. "Do you remember what Alex said right after Nick, um, 'died'?"

Max looked confused. "He never died. Dude, he's sitting right there."

"For once, he has a point," Joe said. "I think we're all going crazy, being stuck here."

"What I thought. Thank you, Max. And Joe." He turned back to me, and whispered, "I think I did better than I thought."

He had. He'd erased everyone's memory of my death. Nick Lucas was once again alive. I was absolutely dumbstruck. And Justin didn't seem to require a thank you, not that I was in any state to give him one. I was in shock. Disbelief.

I loved magic, I decided, no matter whose magic it was.

Minutes, hours flew, and although people came and went from the intensive care unit, there was not one more remark about how I was dead, from a wizard or non-wizard. Or Angel, in my brothers' case, being a bit more inclusive with my thoughts.

It might have been days (or according the clock, six hours and thirty-sixish minutes), but Mr. Russo emerged from the swinging gray doors with smiles on their faces. "She's awake," Mr. Russo announced, and his eyes fell on me. "She's asking about you. The doctor says she's still a little high on the drugs they gave her, especially because she keeps ranting about how you're dead, Nick, but…" He smiled. "Would you like to come set her straight?"

So Alex remembered. If no one else did, Alex did. Justin shrugged and motioned slightly with his hand. Joe and Kevin nodded and went back to their game of poker. Max was asleep. "Yes," I said, and followed them down the hallway, down endless corridors and gray walls and smiling nurses and beeping machines…

We came to a door, and her father knocked on it. "Come in," a nurse and her mom chorused at once.

Slowly, I walked into the room behind her dad. "Alex?" I whispered, keeping my voice low.

"Nick!" The beeping machine in the corner started beeping faster, and my heart felt compelled to match it, nervously beating at that speed. "You're alive."

"Yeah. Barely." I half-ran, half skipped over to her side, and whispered in her ear, "Thanks to you."

The nurse picked up a clipboard and motioned to Alex's parents. "We'll leave you two alone for a while, you're in stable enough condition to do so," she told Alex, and they left the room.

"I did it," she breathed, amazed. "I actually brought someone back to life."

"Technically, I wasn't dead," I reminded her, but she only smiled and closed her eyes, as if imagining something, or looking for something in the back of her mind. "I'm just glad you're okay, though."

"I'm fine. Apparently I ran a marathon, according to the doctor," she replied.

"Justin tried to tell him that you would never do that."

"The doctor doesn't listen. Believe me."

We sat there in silence for a while, her hand in mine. "So now what?" she whispered. "Does everything become 'normal' now?"

"Normal?" I shook my head. "Life isn't normal. Especially if you're a teen popstar who's secretly a wizard whose brothers are Angels."

"Especially if you're his girlfriend," she added with a smirk.

"Like you," I whispered. "Exactly like you."

"Celebrity couple name time," she said sarcastically. "Alick or Nalex?"

I snorted. "Nalex. If I had to pick."

The nurse stuck her head back into the room. "One minute."

I looked into Alex's eyes. "The bonding spell broke, somehow. But… I think I liked it better when we were…" I trailed off, not knowing how to phrase it correctly. My hand grew clammy around the wand, but that didn't stop me from using the spell that Alex had used before, the forbidden one. As our minds became one, the world became complete. My glimpse into Alex's brain told me that she loved me in the same way that I loved her, and that was all I needed to know.

"Okay, time's up." The nurse came in and grabbed my hand, pulling me up off the chair. At her contact, the spell broke, and I knew that everything had worked perfectly.

_Bye, Nicholas. See you soon._

_I love you, Alexandra. Don't you ever forget it._

_I won't. Ever._

She meant every single word. And so did I. It was love, and it was perfect, and I wanted my happily ever after ending now. We deserved it. No more battles, no more nothing. Just her and me forever, right now… that'd be alright. We'd chase the stars to lose our shadows, and leave it all behind.

Yeah. Like that's ever going to happen. Because, quote Shakespeare, the course of true love never did run smooth.

But for now, I'd let myself enjoy it.

* * *

**A/N: IT IS OVER. Not for good, heck no. I'm writing a sequel because I'm just that kind of person. Haha, but for now... it is. The next one will not have a corny happy ending like this one. Sigh. But watch for it soon, because it's coming.... it's coming quickly....**

**This story is dedicated to all my wonderful readers, especially chibiyugixyami and silvereyed angel, who have been there through countless rants and writer's blocks. Thank you all soooooo much.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything... how I wish I did.**


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